


Harry Potter and the Greatest Show

by shadowscribe



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Fluff, Harry is done with your shit, M/M, Master of Death Harry Potter, Neutral Harry, Romance, because MAGIC, kind of, this should not be taken seriously
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2019-01-22
Packaged: 2019-05-30 02:54:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15087428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowscribe/pseuds/shadowscribe
Summary: The last real thing Harry remembers is standing across from Voldemort and watching the killing curse fly at his face.Then he visited a fluffy white limbo that somewhat resembles King Cross Station and instead of choosing to moveonor gobackhe does something else entirely.And wakes up in his cupboard on the morning of Dudley's eleventh birthday.Because that makes sense.(No. No it doesn't.)But Harry is going to roll with it anyway.





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Readers. Dear, lovely, wonderful, _gorgeous_ readers... I literally have no idea what is happening here. This fic did not exist in any shape or form until...*glances at clock*… 2.5 hours ago. And then a note I'd made for my other fic Unbreakable collided with the playing of Neil Young's "Old Man" and... and... *gestures helplessly at the resulting 3k words*. 
> 
>  
> 
> And, because I _only_ have 3 other active fics, plus a series that I need to get around to finishing, plus an original work that has decided that YES. NOW IS THE TIME TO WRITE IT. which means that I'm up to my goddamn eyeballs in sticky notes and world building... I have decided to post this. Because clearly I have nothing left of my mind to lose. 
> 
> Also, I think my muse wanted something a little more trope-y, a little more crack-y, and a little less serious? 
> 
> Or maybe I'm just having some sort of mental episode in response to my in-laws imminent arrival. 
> 
> Whatever the reason, though, here we go. As always:
> 
> Not JK Rowling. Not making any $$.
> 
> Not a finished work, expect irregular updates.
> 
> Literally no idea where I'm headed with this. Honestly, I kind of just set my muse loose and tidied up with tumbled out. I'm slapping a Tom x Harry tag on this baby because that just feels like the way we're headed but I'm not opposed to making other stops along the way, making this a polyamory fic, or including other POV's. So want a pairing or view point or...whatever? Give me a shout out in the comments. No guarentees but if I use I'm sure my muse will treat it with the happy irreverance that this fic wants.
> 
> Comments are life and you all are awesome.

White.

Everything is white.

Utterly, completely, unescapably _white_.

And not white in that crisp white shirt fashion, oh no. Nor is it white like a unicorn’s pelt or white like a patronus. White like… like…

_Like Dumbledore’s beard_.

Kind of fluffy and wispy and if you stare at it long enough you become half convinced that there’s a single thread of gray in there. Somewhere. Or maybe a niffler.

Harry Potter turns in a slow circle and tries to figure out what is going on because he’s pretty damn sure he’s dead but if this is the afterlife than death _sucks_.

Of course a sucky afterlife would _absolutely_ be his luck.

Out of the fluffy white _whiteness_ there comes a wretched, broken wail and Harry whirls around, empty hand held in front of him as if he were brandishing a wand.

Well.

That’s kind of awkward.

Harry lowers his hand and takes a hesitant step forward. And then another. And with each step forward the whiteness around him solidifies into an enormous room with a high, glass domed ceiling. It’s still white – all the same shades of white, in fact – but there’s definition now. Walls. Ceilings. Unlit lamps that line the walls. Benches.

Ahead of him something shuffles and whimpers.

Harry stares.

There, underneath one of the benches, is a baby.

Or, at least, Harry _thinks_ it is a baby. It’s quite possibly the ugliest baby that he’s ever seen – and he’s seen Dudley’s baby pictures. Hell, he’s repotted mandrakes that were cuter than this baby. But it _is_ a baby. Red and scrawny with too thin limbs and a too large head and skin that gleams, slick and wet as if it’s been flayed but a baby nonetheless. Alone. Crying. With no blanket. No nappy. No nothing. Abandoned under a fluffy white bench in whatever _this_ is.

Harry takes another step and then goes down on one knee, his hand reaching out to scoop the poor wretch up.

He might be uglier than a mandrake but he doesn’t deserve to be left here, to be discarded like _trash_.

“You cannot help.”

Harry freezes and looks over his shoulder.

There, sweeping towards him in robes of a brilliant midnight blue – which, quite frankly, are the only reason he doesn’t disappear into the landscape because Harry was totally right and it _is_ the same color as his beard – is Albus Dumbledore.

“Harry.” The old man spreads his arms wide in welcome. “You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk.”

Harry looks back at the child snuffling miserably beneath his outstretched hand. “I’d rather not, sir,” he says, biting back the familiar rise of anger at the word _boy_. “What do you mean, I can’t help?”

Dumbledore lowers his arms and stares past Harry to thrashing infant. “Some things,” he says with an air of vague regret, “are beyond help. Leave it, Harry, and come talk with me.”

Harry stares.

_Leave it_ , he says, like it’s not a baby alone and afraid, crying in this strange place.

“Aren’t you dead?” he asks tightly.

“Oh yes. Quite so.”

“Then… I’m dead too?”

“Ah,” says Dumbledore, his eyes gleaming. “That is the question, isn’t it? On a whole, dear boy” Harry cringes, “I think not.”

Harry stares. “Not?”

“Not.” Dumbledore sounds so damn smug that it makes Harry’s stomach turn.

The tale – the fantastical, impossible fairy tale – that comes out of the dead Headmaster’s mouth does not ease it. It’s a tale of greed and power, of sacrifice, of young love and young ambitions, of death and stones, of wands and loyalty, of a broken man who tried to break the world, of a broken man who broke his soul, and a boy who - apparently – has succeeded where they both failed and conquered death.

Harry doesn’t speak through the entire telling.

_Freak_ , the voices of his aunt and uncle spit inside of his head. And well, they don’t exactly seem to be wrong, do they? He can’t even manage to die properly.

“So what happens now?” Harry asks, when Dumbledore is done.

The Headmaster looks down at him and smiles. “Why now, my boy, now you get to choose!”

“Choose,” Harry repeats and finds his eyes unerringly drawn to the baby. He has stopped wailing. Not because he wants to but because he has to, because his little throat has given out and his little chest can’t bring itself to make any more noise than the quiet, pathetic little whimpers that escape out of his mouth. Harry knows. Harry remembers that. He remembers what it was like to lay in his cupboard and cry quietly because he knew no one was coming but at the same time he couldn’t do anything but cry, the biology of his body forcing him to reach out, to search for caretakers that never answered.

“Choose,” Dumbledore says again with a magnanimous twinkle of his eyes. “Where does it look like we are, Harry?”

Caught off guard by the question Harry looks around. “Uh… Kings Cross?” he ventures after a moment. It kind of looks like the train station? Maybe?

“Yes, yes! And if you were to board a train it would take you… _on_.”

“On?”

“ _On_ ,” Dumbledore confirms with a tap to the side of his nose. “Of course, you could also choose to go back.”

Harry blinks. “Back?”

Dumbledore hums. “Of course, with all the horcruxes now destroyed it is entirely likely that someone else can destroy the little that remains of Lord Voldemort. Though,” he adds after a second of hesitation, “Tom has always been an excellent duelist and with so many of the Order fallen already…”

Harry stares.

Dumbledore stares.

Dumbledore _smiles_.

“No,” Harry says flatly and watches with restrained glee as the smile falls right off Dumbledore’s face.

“No?” the old man echoes faintly.

“No,” Harry repeats firmly and then he does what he should have done from the very beginning.

He reaches out and he picks up the baby.

 

* * *

 

_Bang! Bang! Bang!_

The sound of a fist hitting a wooden door jerks Harry awake. “…what?” he says after a moment as he stares into the darkness above his head and tries to figure out what the fuck is going on.

“Get up, boy! Don’t be late getting breakfast!” his aunt’s familiar screech cuts through his thoughts. Harry sits up so fast he bangs his head into the wall.

“… _what?_ ” he repeats, aghast.

“Breakfast!” Aunt Petunia shouts back. “Don’t you dare ruin Duddikins special day!”

“… _WHAT?!?”_  Harry says, one more time. Except this time no sound comes out, the shock of the whole thing driving his voice straight out of human hearing. Once he manages to find his glasses and shoe them on his face it is blatantly clear that _yes_ , he _is_ shoved in the dusty, spider filled cupboard under the stairs of Number Four Privet Drive.

He’s still dead, isn’t he? He has to be. He has to be dead and this is hell. Fuck, he doesn’t even believe in hell but if he did, he’s pretty sure that it would look like this.

Bloody, buggering _hell_.

After a few seconds, a minute tops, in which he hyperventilates to the point that he throws up in his mouth a little Harry opens the door and climbs out of the cupboard.

The inside of Number Four looks exactly how he remembers it. Well, no, that is not quite right. There’s no boxing medals and trophies displayed in the living room but the lamp that Harry is pretty sure Dudley broke when they were thirteen is still sitting over on the table in the far corner.

“… _what?”_ he mouths to himself again and, in a fit of desperation, turns and looks at the mirror hanging over the entry table.

Harry Potter stares back at him.

Correction.

Little tiny baby Harry, who can’t be more than ten or eleven and is still short with a gaunt, pale face and overly messy hair, stares back at him.

Little tiny baby Harry yanks back his hair and stares.

There it is.

Still shaped like a lightning bolt. Still obvious.

He yanks up his shirt sleeve next. The flesh there is startling bare, the only scars the shiny burn on the inside of his wrist where he got splashed by hot bacon grease when Dudley shoved him into the stove. Missing are the angry, ropey scar that Pettigrew had left him with the night of Voldemort’s resurrection and puncture marks in his shoulder and upper arm from where the bloody basilisk had bit him.

“Move, you freak!” Dudley shoves him as he runs past and Harry does a header into the table, knocking Aunt Petunia’s purse and the handful of tacky knick-knacks to the ground with a crash.

“Bugger,” Harry mutters even as Dudley yells,

“MUM! Harry’s wrecking your stuff!”

“What’s this, then?” Vernon’s voice makes Harry freeze where he’s crouched over the mess, hip throbbing where it had hit against the corner of the table. “Thought you could ruin Dudley’s birthday, did you? Thought you could act out and steal the attention away from him, did you?”

“… _what?_ ” it falls out before he can stop it but honestly, how stupid are they? Why the hell would he ever _want_ their attention? They’d made it perfectly clear by the age of three that any attention from his family was… uncomfortable. Neglect and starvation was (is?) the pits but it’s better than being smacked around because he won’t stop crying. Or trying to play with Dudley. Or asking for a hug when he skins his knee.

Uncle Vernon turns a rather unpleasant shade of puce.

“YOU WILL NOT RUIN DUDLEY’S BIRTHDAY!” he roars and Harry winces against the bits of spittle that hit his face. “You will pick this up and go make breakfast and…”

“No.”

For a moment Harry genuinely fears that his uncle’s face is simply going to explode. Or hopes. The two sensations are all mixed up in a funny twisting ball located somewhere in the pit of his stomach.

“Boy…”

“No,” Harry interrupts firmly, but calmly. Inside, he’s shaking but if he can stand across from Voldemort and let the other wizard fire a Killing Curse at his face without flinching he absolutely refuses to cringe away from the look of absolute fury on his uncle’s face. “My name is Harry. Harry. James. Potter. Not boy. Not freak. _Harry_. And… no. I refuse. I don’t care if this is a dream or hell or just another world inside of Dumbledore’s beard – _I refuse_.”

They’re still staring at him, all three of him, when he turns on his heel and marches out the front door. He figures he has about five minutes to get away before Vernon and Petunia come to their senses and try to haul him home to punish him.

 

* * *

 

Harry walks.

And walks.

And walks until he comes to some little park that he’s never been to before where he promptly picks the remotest corner and plops down in a heap at the base of a tree. He needs to think. Not his natural state of being, he knows, but he needs to do it nonetheless.

So.

The last real thing, that he is aware of, is watching the Killing Curse speed towards him. So, he’s dead then.

Except, there’d been the white place and that story that Dumbledore had told. It’s ridiculous and horrifying and thus, with Harry’s luck, is probably true, which means that he’s the Master of Death – because _that_ doesn’t sound ominous at all, oh no – and thus can’t die. Not unless he chooses too. Or that was the implication he got from Dumbledore’s comments about choosing to get on the train and move on to the…whatever came next. Which he didn’t. He didn’t choose to do that. So, he’s not dead then.

Right?

Maybe. Probably. He certainly feels alive. There’s definitely a bruise on his hip from the corner of the hall tabe.

But he didn’t choose to go back, either because what was there to go back to?

No, instead he had picked up the baby. The baby that he rather thought was the little broken remains of one Tom Marvolo Riddle. Because the man might have become an absolute monster but not even a monster deserves to be left naked and crying under a bench in some fluffy train station limbo.

So he had picked up the baby and woken up in his cupboard.

Because _that_ makes sense.

Not.

Harry lets out a sigh and pulls his knobby little knees up to his chin and wraps his arms around his legs.  “For the sake of what remains of my sanity I’m going to assume that I am actually live,” he whispers to himself. “Just… in my younger body.”

His almost-eleven-year-old body. He’s pretty sure.

Frankly, this might not actually be the strangest thing that’s ever happened to him.  It’s not even his whirl with time travel, though the whole seventeen year old mind in a ten year old body thing is definitely new. At least this time he doesn’t have to worry about seeing himself and thinking he’s his own dad.

So what is he going to do?

Keeping everything the same and preserving the timeline is already out. Because he definitely didn’t tell off his relatives, steal the money that had fallen out of Aunt Petunia’s purse, and run away on Dudley’s eleventh birthday the first time he’d lived it. Though he rather thinks the Dursleys will enjoy this a great deal more than having to drag him to the zoo and then getting a boa constrictor accidentally set on them.

And fuck the blood wards, he is not going back to that house.

He could go to Dumbledore, he supposes. That would probably be the smart thing to do. He could tell him all about the horcruxes and the Deathly Hollows and that would be that. Voldemort would be dead and Harry… Huh. Well, is he still the Master of Death? Or has it reset since he’s been sent back to before he had possession of all three hollows? If the latter, somehow he thinks that Dumbledore just letting Harry disarm him isn’t going to cut it when it comes to winning the allegiance of the Elder Wand.

Plus, if Harry’s being honest, he’s more than a little pissed off at the Headmaster because of… well, _everything_.

_Some things are beyond help_ , he had said in train station limbo.

Harry’s not sure he believes him but he thinks that Dumbledore has believed it for a very long time. Probably starting with a whispered confession of “ _I can talk to snakes_ ,” from an excited dark haired, dark eyed boy some fifty-ish years ago in little room in an orphanage in London.

He’s also not sure that it matters. If it saves the world…

Harry sighs.

This is getting him nowhere.

So, maybe if he approaches the problem from a different angle?

What does he want?

What does _he_ , Harry Potter, _want_?

“To be normal,” he whispers because that’s all he’s ever wanted: to be a normal, regular boy with parents and homework and normal everyday things. It’s also the one thing he can never have. That train left the station when his parents died. Or before that, even, when the prophecy was given. Maybe even before that. Who knows? Maybe Harry Potter’s chances of being normal were well and truly fucked the moment Merope Gaunt laid eyes on Tom Riddle Sr.

Regardless, he’s kind of stuck as Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, and the Savior of the Wizarding World etc, etc.

Which is kind of depressing.

So, what does the Savior of the Wizarding World want?

It takes a few minutes and some careful breathing to make himself set aside the dream of _normal_ and try to picture something else but when he does…

He sees Sirius, alive, healthy, and walking the streets in broad daylight: a free man. A happy man.

He sees Remus, alive, healthy, gainfully employed, and understood without fear. A happy man.

He sees Pettigrew behind bars – or dead, dead is very attractive – for his role in the Potter’s murders.

He sees Severus Snape, alive, healthy, and free from the shackles his masters have trapped him with. A happy man. Or at least one that isn’t so bloody miserable.

He sees himself. He sees actually getting to _learn_. He sees attending Hogwarts and exploring the magical world and not constantly worrying about how Voldemort’s going to try and kill him and who he has to protect. He sees himself with friends. Real friends. Ron and Hermione…

… his breath catches in his throat at the thought of them. They’ve been great friends, mostly, and he loves them but they haven’t always been particularly good friends.  He wants friends that aren’t perpetually jealous of his ill-gotten fame or the fortune that sits in his vault at Gringotts. He wants friends that understand him and friends that don’t get huffy whenever he actually makes an effort at his school work.

He wants a job. Something besides Auror. He’s done enough Dark Wizard capturing for one life, thank you very much.

He wants a family. He wants a… spouse. He wants children. He wants a home.

He wants to help change the wizarding world. He wants to make it better while still respecting the culture that already exists. The culture that he knows he never actually got to learn or understand.

He wants a different ending to the story.

He wants to save everyone he can.

He wants for there to never be another war.

And he…

Harry lets out a long, shuddering sigh.

… he wants to give Tom Marvolo Riddle the chance that no one else ever gave him.

“Bloody hell, Harry,” he mutters to himself, “you’re insane. You’re bloody mental. _You have_ _lost the fucking plot_.”

The picture in his head, however, stays the same.

“Fine,” he announces to the air. “Just… fine.”

He can do this.

He can.

He will.

He’ll be the Boy Who Lived but he is going to actually _live_.

He’ll endure a life spent with grandiose titles stuck next to his name and his picture in the papers and every detail of his existence filling up the gossip column but it will be _his_ life. It will belong to him. Not to Dumbledore. Not to the Wizarding World. To _him_.

They want to make his life into a one trick pony show? Fine. Then he’ll give them the best damn show they’ve ever seen.

Feeling the familiar sensation of resolve settling into his chest Harry lets out another sigh and gets to his feet. No time like the present to get started and getting started in the wizarding world means one thing: a trip to Diagon Alley.

He rather hopes that the cash he’s taken from Petunia’s purse is enough to get him to London.

And buy him something to eat.

Merlin, he’s starving.


	2. Two

It’s easier to get to London than he thought it would be. Frankly, it’s probably far too easy for a small boy of nearly eleven – one who doesn’t even look his bloody age at that – to make the journey without anyone expressing concern over him at all. Not for the first time Harry wonders if he has some sort of Notice Me Not charm attached to him. It would certainly explain more than a few things.

After carefully studying the bus schedule Harry determines he has just enough time and money to purchase his ticket and a lovely golden pastry from the café on the corner, the center of it filled with cheese and cherries. He wants to devour it on the spot, to shove the entire thing in his mouth and cram it down his throat before anyone can take it from him. He resists, barely. He’s not at the Dursleys anymore, he reminds himself, and he’s certainly not living out of a tent and scrounging fallen nuts from the forest floor. As soon as he gets to Gringotts he’ll have more gold than he knows what to do with. He’ll be able to buy himself real meals, real food on a regular basis.

He offers the barista a shy smile and accepts both the packaged pastry and bottle of water from her before dropping his change in the tip jar.

Through sheer force of will he doesn’t touch his newly gained food until he is safely on the bus, hunkered down in a seat at the back, and they are pulling out of the bus stop. It takes a bit of skill but he makes the flakey pastry last the whole way to London.

Once in London he manages to find his way to the Leaky Cauldron without too much trouble. He only gets lost twice, which is bloody impressive considering he can count the number of times he’s approached the alley from the muggle world on one hand and still have plenty of fingers left over. His relief at actually managing to find the place is enough that he almost runs straight for the door.

Almost.

Except for then his brain, which he does have, manages to kick itself on and sputter into working order.

Harry freezes, one leg extended mid-step over the curb of the street. The last time – or, rather, the last _first_ time – that he’d gone into The Leaky Cauldron he had been recognized by every witch and wizard in the inn and promptly mobbed by them. Which just won’t do. At least, not right now. Not why he’s wearing nothing more than Dudley’s ratty, oversized cut off and he looks rather like a half starved kitten that someone has dumped in the gutter. When the wizarding world realizes who he is he wants to be firmly settled behind the persona of the Boy Who Lived.

But he can’t do that without getting into Diagon Alley. And he can’t get into the Alley without going through the Leaky Cauldron.

Bollocks.

He probably should have thought this through a little more than he had.

“Story of my life,” he mutters as he slinks back into the doorway of the shop across from the unseen magical inn. What he needs is a plan. An actual, detailed, thought out, does-not-involve-just-jumping-in-and-assuming-he-actually-knows-what’s-going-on plan.

Of course, try as he might, he can’t actually think of a plan.

His invisibility cloak is, at this time, in Dumbledore’s possession – a thought that makes him angry for approximately half a second before he rockets right past that to something dangerously close to terror because at this point in time Albus Dumbledore _still possesses the Elder Wand._ Which means that currently he’s only one cursed ring Horcrux away from being the Master of Death.  And that realization feels like being dropped naked into the Black Lake. In January.

Bloody hell, he just have found a new form for his boggart to take.

Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but after everything he learned from Bathilda Bagshot and then from Dumbledore himself the idea of the man being in possession of all three Deathly Hollows is enough to make his heart jerk around inside of his chest like a cursed bludger.

After losing a good five minutes to panic and grand ideas of storming Hogwarts and ripping the Cloak out of Dumbledore’s grasp, Harry manages to shove the panic into a little box and lock it. He’ll have to bloody well worry about that later because he still hasn’t figured out how to get into Diagon Alley unnoticed.

A glamour is his next thought but there’s two problems with that plan: a) he lacks a wand to perform it with and b) his knowledge of glamour spells is limited to the vague memory of copying Hermione’s essay – or parts of it, anyway – as part of a homework assignment for Sixth Year Charms.

The wand problem dashes his idea of disillusionment.

He doesn’t have polyjuice or any way to get his hands on it.

In fact, magical means of disguise are pretty much out of the question. Well, unless he has a burst of accidental magic and turns his hair a different color or something.

Wait.

Harry pauses on that thought. Could he… maybe… do accidental magic on purpose? Wandless magic is a thing, right? And he hasn’t bought his wand yet so he doesn’t have the Trace and he wouldn’t be getting any warnings from the Ministry. Or at least he assumes so. He’s pretty sure that if his aunt and uncle had gotten a notification via owl every time he’d accidentally caused something to happen they would have done a whole lot more than lock him in his cupboard without anything to eat. He eyes his reflection in the grungy shop window with critical purpose. He doubts anything magical could actually cover up the scar, given what it is. Aunt Petunia’s make up certainly never managed to keep the thing concealed, even if Harry actually approved of her attempts. But if he changed his appearance enough that people didn’t look at him and think “ _Oh, there goes a mini James Potter”_ they wouldn’t attempt to look for the scar…

Taking a deep breath, Harry closes his eyes and tries to change the way he looks.

It doesn’t work.

Harry sighs.

Maybe…

He thinks for a moment of how it feels to cast a spell. Not the ‘foolish wand waving’ or his general fear that he’s going to perform the wand movements incorrectly and accidentally blow someone’s head off or something but the actual act of drawing on his magic. He thinks of the warmth he can feel singing through his veins and the way it bubbles up like a fizzy drink until it’s humming in his chest and tingling at his extremities. He holds on to that feeling and focuses on his… hair.

Yeah. His hair. That should be easy enough to change. Make it a little longer to help hide his scar and change the color… He imagines a deep, glorious red like his mum’s. That should change it enough without making him stand out.

He focuses and…

Well.

Harry stares at his reflection.

His hair is not red. It’s also not black anymore either.

It’s a bright, achingly familiar, bubblegum pink.

Well, that is depressing.

Of course, it’s also effective because he definitely doesn’t look like Harry Potter anymore. If anything he looks like he could be Tonks’ brother – or Sirius’ son.

_That_ thought makes his bloody heart stop in a pained, hopeful sort of way. They’re still alive, both of them, and he’ll get to see them again _if_ _he can ever get his bloody act together_.

“Get a hold of yourself, Potter,” he mutters to his reflection as he attempts to flatten his hair some more. It doesn’t really work – it never does – but at least the bright pink color makes it significantly harder to spot his scar. “Pretend you’re trying to sneak past Snape and you’ve forgotten the cloak and everything will be fine.”

Maybe.

Hopefully.

 

* * *

 

Everything is fine.

In fact, for all of the time he spent stressing over it, he is in and out of the Leaky Cauldron in less than five minutes. No one points or gapes at his scar. No one screams, “It’s Harry Potter!” and then tries to shake his hand off of his arm. No one draws attention to the little boy who simply wants to disappear. He doesn’t even have to speak to the barman, Tom.

He does little more than slink inside the dim space, look around, and then, when a trio of gossiping elderly witches rises from a table and makes their way towards the alley, he simply follows along behind them like some poor put upon kid left to go shopping with Great Aunt Mildred and all of her friends. It’s surprisingly effective and he can’t help but feel a little silly for actually worrying so much.

Of course, maybe it goes so smoothly because he thought of the risks and attempted to minimize them before diving on in.

Merlin, is this what it feels like to have a plan? Or something that’s at least within spitting distance of being a plan?

Huh. No wonder everyone is always going on about them.

 

* * *

 

“Name?”

“Harry Potter,” Harry murmurs back, as quietly as he can manage. Perched above him, the goblin actually pauses and looks up. Or down, rather.

“Key?”

Harry bites at his bottom lip. “I, uh, don’t actually have my key. No one’s ever given it to me. But I know I’ve got an account here. Can I, er, is there any way to…?”

Wow. Brilliant form of communication there, Harry. Top shelf stuff.  Inwardly, he slaps himself and adds ‘ _Learn how to speak without sounding like a fucking idiot’_ to the ever growing list of things he’d started compiling on the bus.

The goblin eyes him skeptically and Harry resists the urge to flatten his hair again. Or lift the fringe and show off the scar. It’s kind of hard to tell, actually. “Three drops,” the banker instructs and with a small pop and fizzle a small piece of parchment and a small iron dagger appear in front of Harry.

“Er…” Harry swallows back his distaste for letting any of his blood out of his body. Historically it hasn’t been a great thing but he doesn’t think the goblins are going to go running off to resurrect a dark lord. Also, he’s not sure three drops would be enough. Wormtail had taken a bit more than that.

The knife is so sharp that the cut doesn’t even sting until long after he’s let three ruby red drops well up and drip down onto the parchment. The knife vanishes in a flash and the parchment flutters up into the goblins long fingers like a well-trained bird, were it is eyed just as critically as Harry himself had been.

“You’ve never been given a vault key?” the goblin asks and Harry jerks his head.

“No. Never.” And really, it’s not even a lie. He’s never actually gotten to keep his Gringotts key. It’s always found its way back to Hagrid or Mrs. Weasley. Truthfully, it was something that hadn’t even occurred to him as odd until sometime during his fifth year.

Harry bites back the urge to sigh.

Or slap himself.

“Very well,” the goblin replies after another moment of carefully scrutiny. “Everything is in order. Please follow Griphook.”

Harry swallows and, once it becomes obvious that he can’t think of a single thing to say that doesn’t give away the fact that the last time Harry had seen the goblin – seven years in the future – he had been so injured – _tortured_ \- that he couldn’t get out of bed, simply nods his head.

“This way,” Griphook announces and Harry follows.

He doesn’t take him down to the vaults.

The moment that Harry realizes this he stumbles, tripping over his own feet as he stare, horrified, at the back of Griphook’s head. Goblins can’t read minds, can they? Because just days after he’s broken into a high security vault, stolen a priceless treasure, and escaped on the back of a dragon while destroying a good portion of the bank in the process would be a _fucking horrible_ time to make that discovery. Never mind that it hasn’t actually happened this time, that the cup is still sitting safe and snug in Bellatrix’s vault and the poor dragon is still chained up however many stories beneath their feet.  Harry’s pretty sure that the goblins would disappear him for crimes committed in a… different timeline?  Different reality?

“In here.” Griphook’s voice draws Harry out of his panicked thoughts and he stares at the goblin for a long moment before he notices the open door next to him and the room beyond.  It is a cozy, windowless room with paneled walls lined with built in drawers and bookshelves and a desk that’s nearly the size of the Weasley’s dining table set to one side of the fireplace with a pair of elegant, dark wood chairs set on one side of it with a smaller, more comfortable looking velvet wingback on the opposing side.

After several pointed looks from Griphook Harry takes a seat on one of the wooden chairs.

“Your account manager will be with you shortly.”

Harry blinks. “…what?”

But Griphook is already gone, the door clicking shut behind him.  A second later a large silver tray, complete with a steaming pot of tea, delicate looking cups, and an array of biscuits and small sandwiches appears with a soft _pop_ on the desk-table.

“I have no idea what’s going on,” Harry tells the empty room which, sadly, remains empty and answerless. After a moment of hesitation, Harry caves and pours himself a cup of tea and doctors it with nothing more than a small splash of milk. He ignores the biscuits, sandwiches, and even the small bowl of sugar cubes despite the fact that his stomach has perked up and started growling at the sight of them. He’s probably pushed it enough with the pastry and really shouldn’t tempt fate with any of the nibbles that have been presented to him. Knowing his luck he’d end up retching all over something important.

With a sigh, Harry settles into his chair, takes a sip of his tea, and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And waits.

He waits long enough to finish one cup of tea and start on another.

He waits long enough that his leg starts jumping. Or it would have, were his leg actually long enough to reach. As is, he waits long enough that it starts swinging.

He waits long enough that he’s sure that if he has to wait another bloody second he’s going to jump up and start pacing the room like the tiger at the zoo.

The sound of the door opening is enough to make him jump and spill tea all over his hand. Bloody hell.

“Greetings, Heir Potter. I am Urggrat,” the goblin announces as he moves further into the room, pointedly ignoring the way Harry is dabbing at his hand and the damp spot on the knee of his oversized lounge pants. “I am the Potter account manager.”

“Ummm…” Harry says, rather unintelligently. The goblin stares at him from where he’s settled himself in the wingback chair, an impressive stack of neat files stacked next to his elbow with a small box, like one might get from a jeweler, set on top.  “I don’t know what’s happening,” he finally admits because he can think of absolutely nothing to say.  He’s only ever visited the bank a few times – horcrux hunting included – and he certainly never remembers meeting an account manager before. Of course, he can’t exactly say _that_. So instead he adds, “I just needed to withdraw some money from my account so that I can get my school things.”

“And we will be able to visit your vault in a moment but first we have some other matters to clear up…”

“ _Other matters?_ ” Harry mouths to himself as his panic hits the bottom of his stomach like a rock. This is it. They know about the theft, about the dragon. They’re just going to throw him in a vault somewhere and not check on him for ten years…

 “…We have been trying to contact you for some time,” Uggrat continues calmly, as if Harry isn’t half a step away from a full blown panic attack in the chair across from him. “Since your last birthday in fact. There is the estate reports and the heirship ring. But first…” The goblin slides a small key across the table, the metal of it all shiny enough to do a snitch proud. “Your new key. Your vault was rekeyed and re-warded after the events of October 31, 1981 and are being done so again. Should someone attempt to use the old key it will be confiscated and destroyed. Would you like to press charges for attempted theft should someone attempt to access your account?”

“Err…” Harry pauses for a moment. _Does_ he want to press charges? “…yes,” he answers quietly and is surprised to find that he means it. Or maybe not. He knows who currently possesses it and the idea of Dumbledore being charged with attempted theft is probably more delightful than it should be. Given the past few days – or _his entire bloody life_ – Harry feels he’s entitled to occasional bouts of being a horrible person where the headmaster is concerned.

He’ll feel a bit bad if Hagrid shows up and tries to use it on Dumbledore’s orders. But not, he realizes, enough to rescind his agreement.

The guilt at _that_ , at not letting it pass, is almost enough to make him open his mouth. Almost.

But then he remembers.

He already gave this world everything once. His family. His childhood. His life.

They don’t get to have it again.

“Excellent.” Urggrat notes something down in the file spread open in front of him before he closes it and takes the next file from the top of the stack. “Up next…”

* * *

 

What follows is perhaps the longest two hours of Harry Potter’s life.

It takes less than five minutes of that for it to become blatantly obvious that he knows next to nothing about the world he lives in – about the world he died to save.  This isn’t exactly something new. He had been thinking it himself just hours ago as he sat huddled at the base of a tree. Still, there’s a huge fucking difference between knowing, rather vaguely, that you don’t know as much as you’d like, that you’re so busy surviving that you literally have no idea how the world around you works and _being bludgeoned in the bloody face with that knowledge_. Repeatedly. For _hours_.

Really, by the end of it, he’s more than half convinced that he’s the stupidest bastard to ever walk down Diagon Alley and that it’s a bloody miracle he can tie his own shoes.

What really throws him his when Urggrat pushes the three little boxes across the table, opening them with a brush of his finger. Inside each one is a ring. Harry stares at them and distantly, beyond the great wall of _I-don’t-understand-what-is-happening-here_ he feels something that just might be panic bubbling up.

“…what?”

“Your heir rings, Mr. Potter.”

Harry makes a weak waving motion with one hand. “No. No, I get… I get that. I just, er…but there’s three?” _Three_ , he repeats to himself, a little hysterically.

“This one,” Urggrat motions to the ring in the center, a chunky gold signet with a stylized ‘P’ interposed over a leaping stag, “is the Potter ring. This,” the ring on the right is made out of a black material, its surface somehow matte and mirrored at the same time, “is the Peverell ring,” and Harry shudders at the sign of the Deathly Hollows staring up at him, the lines of it bold and uninterrupted but done in such a dark pewter that they nearly disappear against the dark backdrop. “Finally, there is this,” the goblin motions to the final ring and Harry’s lungs freeze in his chest. It is the most ornate of the rings: thick and silver and where the other rings have simple bands, this one takes the form of an ouroboros with gleaming emeralds for eyes. “Slytherin,” the goblin murmurs, almost reverently, as Harry stares at the familiar crest – an S and a serpent entwined – and wonders just how the bloody hell this is his life.

“…how?” he manages to get out after several moments of strangled silence. The Potter ring is his, obviously, and knowing what he does the Peverell makes sense but Slytherin?

_What do you know, the gossips were right_ , he thinks hysterically as his entire torso shakes with the panicked laughter he’s keeping locked behind his teeth. The whole of his second year seems even more of a farce in light of this – like some enormous cosmic joke.

The goblin shrugs. “The same way it usually happens, I imagine. We do not concern ourselves with the mating habits of wizards. We do, however, detest stagnant vaults and unclaimed treasures. Not only does it mess with the accounts but stagnant gold cannot be multiplied,” and here Urggrat offers him a feral, pleased grin that no doubt has to do with the fact that Harry’s spent much of the last hour figuring out how to update the investments of the enormous fortune available to him. “You willingly gave blood at the desk. We merely matched it to any open accounts we have on file.” The goblin taps the side of his nose. “Blood never lies, Mr. Potter, no matter what secrets it holds.”

And while that sounds uncomfortably close to all the pureblood nonsense he’s heard spouted, he has the sense to realize that that is not at all how the goblin means it and clamps down on his instinctive hotheaded response. “So… I just put them on?” he finally asks because he can’t think of a way to inquire if carrying a bit of another man’s soul around for more than a decade is enough to fool the bank.

_Except…_

That can’t be true, can it? Because if he’s simply Slytherin’s heir because of the horcrux sitting pretty in his scar than  wouldn’t there be some mention of the Gaunts in all of this? Even if they were penniless he can’t imagine that they didn’t have a vault at Gringotts. It would be a point of pride, if nothing else.

_Except…_

Dumbledore had said, point blank, that he wasn’t Slytherin’s heir. Of course, knowing what he knows now that qualifier is probably a hint that he should take whatever followed with more than a grain of salt. It’s also highly possible that Dumbledore didn’t even _know_.

“Essentially, though there are some considerations.”

Harry blinks. “Such as?”

“The Potter ring is the… least influential. The Potters are an Ancient House and a wealthy one but they are not members of the nobility and do not hold a hereditary seat on the Wizengamot. However, if you wear the ring visibly, this will be the ring everyone expects to see. Peverell and Slytherin, on the other hand, are both prestigious Ancient and Noble Houses and were it not for the fact that both became extinct in the male line centuries ago _the_ _Sacred Twenty-Eight_ would have been _the_ _Sacred Thirty_. More than that, both lines, while prestigious, are also infamous for delving into darker magics. The Peverells in particular were very talented necromancers. To see their rings on your fingers, in our current world, would…”

“…cause a bloody riot?”

Urggrat’s lips twitch amusedly. “I was going to say that it would be a shock. But your suggestion is not unlikely,” the goblin allows. “Furthermore, both houses possess a seat on the Wizengamot, though you would not be able to sit them unless given dispensation by the current Lord.” The goblin gives him a long, pointed look that makes absolutely no sense to Harry until he adds, softly. “We are a neutral party, always, Mr. Potter and we do not discuss the clients of this bank with anyone, even other clients. However, I can tell you that the Lordship rings for both the Peverell and Slytherin houses have been claimed and they have not returned to us as they would in case of their wearer’s death.”

Oh.

OH.

_OH._

The implications hit him like a full on blow from the Hogwarts Express.

“Additionally,” the goblin goes on, as if he didn’t just announce that Lord Voldemort is not nearly as dead as people think, “both the Peverell and Slytherin rings are goblin forged and have a great deal of protective magic woven into them. Curse deflection and poison detection, mostly. There are also vaults that cannot be accessed until the ring is on your finger. It acts as a secondary key.”

“And if I wear them? Would… would everyone know? Would anyone be, er, notified?”

Urggrat smiles toothily. “The rings themselves are designed to be unobtrusive. There is a subtle variation of a Notice Me Not anchored to the ring itself plus any additional protections the houses themselves may have put on them. Customarily the Lords or Heads of houses be present when the rings are given but that is not possible in your scenario.  As none of your guardians, to our knowledge, have any familial ties to the families represented here they will not be notified of your formal acceptance of your heirship status.”

Harry nods, accepting the goblin’s words and letting them sit in his mind while he stares at all three rings. The Potter one, for a certainty, will be leaving with him. This tangible piece of his family, his heritage, that he had no idea even existed. But the others…

Does he need them? Probably not.

Does he want them? That’s a trickier question and one he should probably take more time to think about but he can already feel the answer like some yearning beast sitting inside of his chest. What does he want? He wants options. He wants a life.

And, hell, he promised himself he would give the world a show. Might as well start now.

Merlin, he's going to regret this later. He's almost sure of it.

“So how do I do this?”

“Simply put them all on the little finger of your non dominant hand. I recommend the Potter one first because even though it is the least prestigious you have the strongest connection with it. You are, technically, already the Head of the Potter House but you are not legally eligible until your seventeenth birthday, barring early emancipation. Once they are all on the magic of the rings will reform them into something that is unique to you and your magic while still retaining the qualities of the rings themselves.”

Harry does as he instructs and slides the golden Potter ring onto his left pinky. “Ow!” he yelps as the ring seems to stab him and a bolt of electricity races up his arm.

“Oh, yes. There will be a little prick. And a bit of a shock,” the goblin tells him unrepentantly as he begins to gather up all the files and papers that they have gone over and – on Harry’s part in many cases – signed.

Harry scowls at the rings and mutters, “Brilliant,” under his breath as he reaches for the next one. The Peverell and the Slytherin rings go on in short order, each one seeming to stab at his skinny little finger before sending bolts racing up and down his arm. Once they are all on it looks a little ridiculous: three massive – even with their bands resized! – rings lined up on his undersized finger with just the tip of his nail peeking out from beneath them.  “Um. Weren’t they supposed to…?” Harry starts to ask because there is no way he’s walking around like this. Unobtrusive or not, he’d never be able to get a bloody thing done.

But then the rings convulse on his finger.

For a moment they just sit there, twitching and vibrating, bumping against each other until suddenly they’re twitching faster and faster and faster until the edges of them blur together and they grow very warm against the flesh of his finger.

And then they stop.

And there’s only one ring there.

“Bloody hell,” Harry breathes out. It is… it’s perfect. It’s absolutely bloody perfect. The ring has retained the black of the Peverell, so dark that it almost seems to suck in the light from around them. The band is the ouroboros of the Slytherin, with the small, perfect emeralds still gleaming up at him. A beautiful, golden ‘P’ adorns the center of the ring and behind it, still in a dark pewter is the symbol of the Hollows framed by the delicate gold branches of a stag’s horns.

Urggrat leans across the desk to get a closer look. “Very nice, Mr. Potter. I hope it serves you well.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I do not need to be thanked for doing my job,” the goblin corrects gently but he tips his head to the side as if accepting Harry’s gratitude all the same. “Should you ever have need of something, do not hesitate to contact me or the bank in general. We pride ourselves on our security and neutrality.”

“Of course,” Harry nods his head. After the last two hours it’s a familiar line. Ignoring his own adventures involving polyjuice, an invisibility cloak, an Unforgiveable, and a dragon it’s also probably true.

“In the interest of that, this is yours. I suggest you burn it before we go down to the vaults.”

“…what?”

Urggrat pushes a small, familiar slip of paper across the table and Harry picks it up, unthinking and reads the lines of crimson text.

He stops.

He reads them again.

He swallows. Hard.

 

**_Harry James Potter_ **

**_Born:_ ** _July 31, 1980_

**_Died:_ ** _May 2, 1998_

**_Reincarnation via temporal displacement:_ ** _July 23, 1991_

****

**_Current Titles and Accounts:_ **

**_Master of Death_ **

**_Heir Potter (unclaimed)_ ** _Vault 687_

**_Head of House Potter (unclaimed; underage)_ ** _Vault 686_

**_Heir Peverell (unclaimed)_ ** _Vault 842_

**_Heir Slytherin (unclaimed)_ ** _Vault 799_

**_Boy Who Lived (popular opinion)_ **

****

“Also,” Urggrat adds as he stands up, “your hair is turning black.”

Harry sighs and gives in to the urge to let his hand slap across the front of his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone else get slightly terrified when they realize how close Dumbledore was having all three Hollows? No? Just me? 
> 
> I feel like this chapter ends up being a lot of filler but I also couldn't bring myself to axe it either. And, as I realize that this fic is 1000% self indulgence for me (and a likely response to the fact that my 9 year old has now finished reading Order of the Phoenix and I have _feelings_ , so many goddamn feelings), I can't bring myself to care? Also, in addition to my unabashed love for time travel/ do-over fics I really just want to read/write a fic where neutral!Harry tells everyone to fuck off and generally has a good time while doing so.
> 
>  
> 
> And, if Gringotts has a magic that allows them to identify bloodlines and link it to accounts then they also have the ability to... read your magical signature for "major" events. Like dying. Or time travel. (In my head it works a bit like how antibodies show up in one's blood).


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! And so does this fic!
> 
> *throws confetti*

Three and a half hours after he had walked into Gringotts Harry Potter walks out again. He’s still wearing the same worn, overly large, dirty gray muggle clothes and is still sporting the same bubblegum pink hair. He is still small and easily mistaken for a young – well, younger than his body technically _is_ – child as he slips quietly after full grown witches and wizards. In fact, he looks exactly the same as when he went in.

He feels different though.

He’s not sure if that’s the fault of the ring on his pinky or the charmed bag of galleons, sickles, knuts, and a bit of muggle money tucked into his pocket or if it is simply the result of all the new information whirling about his head like the entire stock of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes fireworks.

Or, it could be that suddenly finding his consciousness reborn into his practically eleven year old body is finally starting to sink through his thick skull.

Could be anything, really, but probably a bit of everything. Especially the last point.

Harry’s very much afraid that if he stops to think about everything that he’s either going to accidentally blow up half of Diagon Alley or he’s going to sit down in the middle of the street and just laugh until he’s nothing but a sobbing mess being gawked at by everyone that walks past. _That_ would certainly be an interesting way to enter the wizarding world, he thinks with a wry shake of his head. He can see the headlines now: _Boy Who Cries_! Or something equally stupid.

He sighs.

Of course, if he doesn’t think about things he’s bound to do something irreversibly dumb and completely murder this chance of his before he actually gets started. He needs a plan, which means he needs to think.

Bollocks.

This is not his area of expertise.

Actually, the only thing that could be considered his area of expertise is not dying when he bloody well should have. A talent for which he is thankful for but hopes that he won’t have to use nearly so much this time around.

He’s too jaded to think that he’ll never use it at all.

Still, he’s managed to escape the Dursleys, sort out things at Gringotts – and Merlin, the Potter accounts had been a mess after ten years of neglect. Fortunately there hadn’t been any funny business in the numbers and the only outgoing expense had been a stipend delivered to his lovely Aunt and Uncle every month, which he had absolutely put a stop to. In fact, he’s almost disappointed that he’s not going to be there to see the dismayed looks on their faces when they realize that they’re suddenly lacking a thousand pounds a month. Almost. – and. Well. That’s the question isn’t it? What does he do now?

_Well,_ he mutters to himself, _the first thing you ought to do is get rid of Dudley’s clothes._ If nothing else it would make him feel… like himself, whoever that is. Like an actual person, at least, and not the Freak Who Lives in the Cupboard Under the Stairs.

Not the Boy Who Lived, either. Not quite yet. Not until he has had the time to actually sit and think properly instead of trying to do it on his feet. But he supposes he will need to get anything he think he might need for that as well. After all, it’s a bloody miracle that no one has recognized him yet. It’s not like the bubblegum pink hair is much of a disguise. In fact, as far as he can tell, the only reason that he hasn’t been accosted in the street yet is that no one is actually looking for _Harry Potter_ because no one expects him to be here.

He slows at the thought, ducking out of the crowd to stand unnoticed in the shadows at the corner of a building while his thoughts bounce around the inside of his skull like a pair of bludgers at a professional quidditch game.

Originally, his first Hogwarts letter had arrived the day after Dudley’s birthday. Tomorrow. A week before his eleventh birthday. He wonders if that is significant. It’s not something he’s ever bothered to consider, really. Hogwarts mail always came around his birthday. _After_ his birthday, actually. Except for this first year. That first year it had come exactly a week before. Because it was different. Because it wasn’t just book lists or exam marks. It was _the_ acceptance letter. The introduction to Hogwarts and for Harry – and many others – the introduction to the wizarding world.

He wonders if all the other first years had gotten their letters a week before their birthdays. Right now, he suspects so. Bloody hell, no wonder Hermione had managed to practically memorize a hundred books before ever stepping foot in Hogwarts. She’d had an entire year on the rest of them – because no doubt she’d gone out and acquired all the books and then some the moment she and her parents had gotten over the shock of it all.

And then there had been him. Poor little Harry Potter, chased all over bloody Britain by magical letters until a half giant finally caught up with him on a giant fucking rock and set flame to the tinder of his lonely childhood and aching need to belong.

He wants to curl his fist and snarl like an animal at that. At the _weakness_ of it. Look what needing to belong had gotten him. Look what it had gotten Snape. Remus. Peter _fucking_ Pettigrew.

Look at what burning out that need had done to Tom Riddle.

Harry sighs and barely resists the urge to rub tiredly at his scar. At the horcrux. At Voldemort’s soul piece sitting warm and heavy beneath his skin.

If his suppositions are true – and really, he rather thinks that they are, he’s not _completely_ stupid – then the entire wizarding world knows that tomorrow Harry Potter is going to receive his Hogwarts letter. It’s not like his birthday is a secret. In fact, though he previously made a serious attempt to avoid reading anything written about himself, he suspects that he could march into Flourish & Blotts and find his date of birth written in at least a handful of biographies or modern history texts. Probably double that amount, really.

Which means that they’ll be looking for him. They’ll be _waiting_ for him.

Just like last time.

Fucking vultures.

Which means that today is – likely – the last day that he can walk through Diagon Alley with the possibility of passing unnoticed and unmolested. Oh, he’ll give them their Boy Who Lived but the Boy Who Lived would like to have some semblance of a plan first.

He is very, very tired of having no control over his own damn life.

Harry exhales sharply and pinches his nose in a vain effort to stave off the headache beginning to form behind his eyes.

So. Shopping.

At least this time, having seen the ledgers for his vaults, he knows he doesn’t have to worry about using up all his gold before he graduates from Hogwarts.

 

* * *

 

Madam Malkin’s shop is empty of other customers, lines of pre-made and charmed clothing hanging in neat rows on hangers lining the shop walls with sleek mannequins showing off the latest fashions adorning the middle.  He catches the hem of a set of flowing red dress robes between his fingers as he walks past and shivers as the fine strands of silk and wool catch against the calluses and scars on his fingers.

Merlin, he’d forgotten how soft new, clean fabric could be.

“Just a moment dear!” a cheery voice calls from the back of the shop and Harry can’t help but smile as he watches the elderly witch shove a handful of pins into a rather ornate looking cloak with a swish of her wand. It’s a bit of a relief to see someone familiar, someone kind but who never paid him a lick of attention beyond the fact that he was her customer.  “Headed off to Hogwarts?” she asks as she offers him a smile and waves him towards the fitting rooms in the back corner.

“Yes ma’am,” he replies respectfully, ducking his head.

“Well, hop on up then and I’ll get you measured. We’ll sort that uniform out for you quick as a wink!” Still fighting a small smile Harry climbs up onto the platform and obligingly holds still while she twitters about him like a bird, measuring this and that with a handful of measuring tapes that follow along behind her like a pack of faithful lapdogs. Harry does his best to stand still and not get accidentally strangled, making polite noises as twitters about in kind, meaningless conversation as well as the occasional comment about him needing to eat more.

Madam Malkin, bless her, never looks above his pointy collarbones.

One transaction, thirty minutes, and three different promises that _yes, he will eat more_ later Harry finds himself standing in the loo at the back of the shop staring at his reflection in the mirror.

“You’re a very handsome young man,” the enchanted mirror chirps, “but _that_ hair…”

“It’s not permanent,” Harry mumbles, still staring. He’s never particularly thought of himself as someone who is handsome – certainly not at a mere (almost) eleven years old.  And yet… the mirror is not exactly wrong. He’s not sure that it’s _right_ either but he definitely looks like a person now instead of an oddly shaped abandoned house elf.

In addition to the standard Hogwarts uniform (black) sitting in garment bags on the floor he has taken advantage of the rest of the store as well and is now the proud owner of something that might be actually called a normal wizarding wardrobe. Dudley’s oversized, elephant gray rags have been relocated to the waste bin and everything currently on his body is _new._

And it _fits_.

This may, actually, be a brand new experience for Harry Potter.

Which is five thousand different types of embarrassing. No matter how much he had worried about running out of money or accidentally causing problems with Ron by somehow flaunting his wealth in the redhead’s face past him could have certainly afforded to purchase a package of basic cotton pants that actually fit.

Nervously, almost afraid that if he touches it it’ll disappear, Harry runs shaking hands down his chest and thighs. Over a pair of cotton and silk pants – one of the softest and richest feeling things he’s ever owned – he’s wearing charcoal gray trousers with a crisp black shirt, the top few buttons left unbuttoned so that the pale skin above his pulse point is visible. Matte black leather boots and a simple black over robe complete the look. It’s dignified but not extravagant. It’s nothing as rich as what Malfoy wanders around it but it’s not going to embarrass him – or his houses – if he gets found in it.

Harry inhales unsteadily and gives the stunned little boy in the mirror a firm nod.

He’s Harry fucking Potter.

He can do this.

 

* * *

 

He manages to hold onto that certainty for the rest of his trip through Diagon Alley.  At Slug & Jiggers he takes care to select his cauldron and various brewing tools as well as a couple of sets of the First Year Ingredient Kits. He’ll need only one, technically, but he wants to be prepared. He wants to _know_. For all that he’s always said that he’s pants at potions he did manage to score an Exceeds Expectations on his potions OWL. Not too bad for a student who spends most of his classes either fighting with the professor or attempting to fend off attempts at sabotage by members of the opposing house.  He owes it to himself to see what he can do when he’s actually attempting to understand.  He owes it to Snape too, to the version of the man who sacrificed everything for him.

Harry swallows roughly as he adds the auto-shrinking bags to his pocket.

Snape had been a bastard – a cruel, vicious bully. And Harry… in many ways Harry had ended up being exactly what Snape had accused him of. Oh, not his father, certainly. No matter how much he might have once wished to it is impossible for him to emulate a man he has never known. But rash, arrogant, and narrow minded all the same, so sure of his absolute rightness that he blinded himself to any other viewpoints.

Plus, there’s nothing like living on the run, in a tent, while being hunted by some of the most deranged and powerful wizards in Britain for nearly a year with limited hope and even fewer supplies to teach him the value of a well brewed potion.

He spends a small fortune at Scribbulus’, buying twice as much parchment as he thinks he might need, a veritable rainbow of inks, and handful of eagle feather quills in addition to a set of gorgeous fountain pens. He pauses at the selection of leather bound books, fingers brushing hesitantly over the binding of a particularly deep green one, the cover gleaming with a sheen that makes Harry pretty sure that it’s not ordinary cowhide stretched around the pale cream pages.  A journal, charmed to hold five thousand pages while appearing barely thick enough to account for the covers and a couple dozen pages and then warded to only open to those keyed into the magic. The warding itself is rudimentary and Harry rather suspects that any seventh or even an intelligent sixth year could break through the protections but the idea has merit.

And he’s not quite stupid enough to think that he’s going to be able to keep everything straight in his head.  For Merlin’s sake, he’s lucky if he can remember his own name somedays…

…well, no. That’s not quite true. It’s not like anyone would let him bloody forget it.

But still, the point stands that his brain is a fucking mess. A point that is becoming painfully obvious with each passing second.

Harry has a chance to rewrite history. It would absolutely be his luck to fuck it all up more than Dumbledore and Voldemort combined because he _forgot something_.

He buys the journal.

If nothing else it’s pretty and it’s _his_.

Truthfully, he uses that excuse more times than he’d like to admit before the day is done.

After collecting a telescope, star charts, and a small selection of sweets from various shops he is very happy to find the shop that sells wizarding luggage, where he promptly spends more than he will at any other shop that day. It’s the idea of wizarding space. The idea of having a flat inside of one of the compartments of his trunk – despite the fact that he has the ward keys to the three Potter properties in the British Isles sitting in the pouch from Gringotts – is simply too much to resist. The idea of having a place that is _his_ , that will always be his and his alone makes his hands shake. Though he does manage to talk himself down to the single room studio style suite instead of the two bedroom layout he had been eyeing initially.

He’s not Dudley, Harry tells himself sternly. He doesn’t need two bedrooms.

The salesman, he can tell, is just a little disappointed in Harry’s restraint.

Once the various charms have been applied Harry takes a moment to resize it in the sheltered corner of a side alley and carefully load his purchases into the main compartment before shrinking it and placing it back in his considerably emptier trouser pocket. He’ll have plenty of time to organize everything later but he needs to finish with his shopping as soon as he can. The longer he’s here the better chance he has of being recognized.

At Flourish & Blotts Harry finds himself grateful for the complete lack of faith the store and its owners has in the average parent – and student’s – ability to remember their book list and tips the whole selection of the First Year books into the basket on his arm. Honestly, the only one he could remember with any surety is _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1_ and he’s pretty sure that Crabbe and Goyle could probably manage to remember _that_ so he finds such a feat to be a very hollow victory. Necessity satisfied, he wanders up and down the crowded, book stuffed aisles. Driven by curiosity and regret a large number of tomes make their way into his basket.

Even accounting for the feather light and expansion charms on the basket and the large number on the summaries of his vaults Harry limits himself to fifty additional books. The handful of best sellers from the children’s section will be easy reads. On the other hand, the dusty volume on the history of the Wizengamot and the influence and stances of the various families which hold seats on it promises to be a long, tortuous slog of many months, if not years.  It probably doesn’t help that the bloody thing is thicker than his head. In addition to the children’s books he picks up a number of wizarding novels as well as more practical things like books and treatises on potion making, advanced magical theory, magical history – including a few that no doubt feature a great deal of probably incorrect information about himself – and a short little series of books that seem to have been designed with muggleborns or muggle raised in mind. They cover everything from the basic structure of the Ministry of Magic to how to properly write with a quill.

Merlin, but those would have been useful his first time around. Hermione had found them, no doubt, and it kind of pisses him off that she never thought to mention them to him. Especially after she discovered that he had been raised by muggle relatives.

Thinking of Hermione though…

Harry nods in satisfaction as he drops his very own copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ on the top of the stack sitting in front of the cashier.  The man’s lips twitch. “Let me guess,” he drawls wryly as he begins to ring up Harry’s selections. “Muggleborn?”

Not wanting to outright lie to someone who might remember him and eventually put two and two together Harry simply blinks and tries to look politely confused.

It works.

“Ah… I mean… your family isn’t magical?”

“Oh!” Harry gives a little laugh and shakes his head. “No, they’re not magical _at all_ ,” he adds, barely keeping himself from shuddering at the thought.  The idea of Dudley with a wand is frankly terrifying. The bloated shit would probably have made an excellent Death Eater if he managed to survive his first day of classes without accidentally blowing himself into a thousand different pieces.

“Well it’s good to see you take an interest in our world,” the man nods knowingly. “So few do.”

“Well that seems dumb,” Harry mutters, ducking his head to hide the burning of his cheeks. “It’s my world now too. I figure if I’m going to be part of it I better familiarize myself with it.” And yet he hadn’t. He’d run away to Hogwarts each year with relief, escaping the bitterness and abusive atmosphere of the Dursley residence with nothing but relief, but he had never bothered to learn anything of real substance about the world he was living in. About the world he had been expected to save.

Because quidditch teams and broom standings… they… they don’t count.

But this time he’s going to do it right. He hopes.

The clerk’s smile broadens as he hands over Harry’s bags. “A wise attitude to have. Welcome to your new world,” he adds after a pause. “I hope you like it here.”

Harry doesn’t bother to stem the brilliant smile that splits his lips.

And even though he’ll have Hogwarts’ library at his fingertips in a month’s time he also grabs one of the store’s mail order catalogues on the way out.

 

* * *

 

After Flourish & Blotts, despite his worry of being recognized, Harry finds himself dragging his feet. He kills some time and puts off the next task on his to do list by allowing himself to be distracted by the magical grocer that he’d never realized existed there in a little tuck of the road before it narrows and turns into the more meandering gloom of Knockturn Alley. It’s more delightful than it should be to purchase things like tea and cocoa and bread and other simple groceries that will fit inside the small kitchenette his trunk studio boasts. Fucking Dursleys.

He even stops and buys a copy of the Daily Prophet from a vendor on the corner but eventually he runs out of reasonable excuses and finds himself standing midway between the two shops, looking back an forth, considering.

_You’ve faced down and killed a Dark Lord,_ he reminds himself, _so grow a bloody spine and get on with it!_

Still, it takes another three deep breaths and the reminder that he’d been in bloody Gryffindor for six years before he looks once more, gives a firm nod of his head, and walks forward to open the door into _Magical Menagerie._

The inside of the pet store is dim compared to the bright, sun lit streets outside, and a wave of noise assaults his ears as soon as he steps through the door: a riot of croaking toads and singing frogs blending with the meowing of cats and the screeching of owls. It is to the last that he goes, eyeing the mass of feathers moving up and down the crowded perches with a wariness more appropriate to approaching a Blast Ended Skrewt or even a small dragon rather than the most common form of wizarding communication.  It’s just…

He misses Hedwig.

She hadn’t just been his mail carrier. She’d been his dearest companion and friend. She had never abandoned him, never mocked him, never called him a liar, and certainly never treated him like he was anything special, which is more than he can say about every other being in his life. He had been Just Harry to her and it had been the most refreshing and healthy relationship of his seventeen years.

And she had died for him.

Because of him.

Just one of many, in that regard.

But one of the most deeply mourned and the most dearly missed.

But he needs an owl of his own. The school has owls that students are welcome to use but they have no particular loyalty and Harry doesn’t dare trust them with any potentially delicate information or letters that he might need to send. The knowledge has been gnawing at him since the moment the realization had come crashing into his skull  while talking with Urggrat about the mail redirection that Dumbledore had set up for him nearly ten years ago.

(And he’s not thinking about that. _He. Is. Not._ Because if he starts then things are probably going to start shattering all around him. The meddling bastard.)

So yes, Harry knows that he needs an owl – one of his own, one that he can trust – but he can’t decide which option is worse: replacing Hedwig entirely or purchasing her and carrying on as if he didn’t already have six years of memories, a whole other life, with her swimming around inside his head.

He still can’t decide. Even though he’s standing here, staring up at a swirl of brown and tawny and gray and black feathers while the regal white bird that he knows is sitting in the building just up the street, he still can’t decide.

“See one that you like?”

Harry jumps a little at the voice at his elbow. “Uh… they’re beautiful animals,” he says, because it’s true, and because it avoids the question entirely. The clerk, clearly not long out of Hogwarts, blows a bubble shaped like a unicorn and pops it noisily while staring at Harry with a very Snape-like glare. “I’m not sure I want an owl,” he admits after a few moments trying not to twitch beneath her gaze.

The glare lightens a little at that.

“Well…” she says after blowing and popping a few more bubblegum animals. “It’s always best to wait if you’re not sure but owls don’t require a lot of care, especially if you’re headed for Hogwarts. They keep a nice owlery there. Plus they’re smart – usually,” she amends after what Harry has a sneaking suspicion might actually be Pig, or at least a relative of his, preens himself so excitedly that he falls off the perch and nearly brains himself on the perch staggered underneath it. “… and dead useful.”

“I know. I just…” Harry swallows. “I lost an owl recently and I…”

“…don’t know if you’re ready to move on yet?”

Letting out a shaky sigh, Harry nods. “Yeah.”

The clerk pats his shoulder in a clear, if somewhat awkward, attempt at comfort. “Well, kid, if you change your mind let me know.”

Harry stares up at the chaos of feathers and beaks and gleaming golden eyes for a long moment. He needs an owl. He just can’t bring himself to need one of _them_.

“You’re a sentimental idiot,” he mutters to himself and drags a hand down his face. Of course, as far as he can tell, being a bleeding heart is what got him here in the first place. He’s halfway to the door before something else occurs to him. “Actually…” He pauses, half turned back to where the _Menagerie_ ’s clerk is already back behind the counter.

“Yes?”

“Do you… uh. Do you sell snakes?”

“Snakes?” the woman repeats, gum nearly falling out of her mouth as her eyebrows practically crawl into her hair. “Yeah, kid. We have snakes. Not many of them, mind. They’re not very popular these days what with You-Know-Who. But, yeah, we have some. You want to see ‘em?”

For a moment Harry just stands frozen by the door, heart pounding erratically in his chest. Does he want a snake? In today’s political climate openly owning one, especially as a _pet_ , is tantamount to declaring for the Dark Lord. Or for the Dark in general, at this point, seeing as how Volde – no, _Tom –_ is still currently living on the back of Quirrell’s head.

But still…

He wants to live his life. He wants to be himself. Just Harry.

And Just Harry happens to be a parseltongue and have a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul entwined with his own.

“Yeah. That’d be great.”

The cage in the very back corner of the shop is nearly as large as the Dursley’s sofa. The rock and hollowed log adorned interior is barely visible in the dim light of the shop but even from outside of the cage Harry can feel the heat of the warming charms cast on one side of the habitat.

“Sorry about that,” the clerk corrects the light situation with a flick of her wand, illuminating the area with a soft glow. “Some people really freak out if they realize that we’ve got these back here.”

“Some people are stupid,” Harry mutters under his breath as he presses closer to the enclosure, though apparently not quietly enough because the young woman laughs.

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Anyway, this is all we got. Like I said, it’s not much, but really we only sell a few a year. Usually to Hogwarts graduates who want to show some house pride. These are regular muggle boa constrictors. I can look up the exact variety if you’re interested. If you’re wanting anything more exotic then you’ll probably have to file for a special permit with the ministry. Most magical snakes are venomous and are required to be registered.”

“No, no… muggle and non-venomous is fine,” he assures as he stares at the bodies inside the cage. _And probably for the best_ , he adds silently. Giving a parseltongue a venomous snake is probably about as safe as handing Dudley a loaded gun and he doesn’t need that temptation.

There are two snakes front and center that Harry guesses are only about two feet long, give or take an inch or two. One of them is a pale, almost washed out gray overlaid with darker gray markings. He would call it pale, ghostly even, were it not draped over a serpent so white that it shone, its markings only visible when the animal moves, the miniscule difference in color making the spots pearlescent in the soft light. They’re both gorgeous.

“…are just babies. Barely two months old. Then there’s that poor fellow in the back…”

Harry doesn’t even see him until she points him out, which is ridiculous considering the contrast between the animal’s colors and the dark colored bedding. His body is a pale – so pale it is practically white - glowing yellow with deep reddish orange markings that start out smaller and fainter at the curve of his head and steadily throw larger and bolder as they move down his body until the tip of his tail is brilliant enough that it makes Harry think of the blaze of the sun as it bursts over the horizon. He’s also quite a bit larger than the other two and likely closer to three feet in length.

“…a bit older. He’s very polite at feeding time and very mild mannered overall. People just seem to object to him on account of his looks.”

Harry blinks and tears his eyes away from the snake. “…what?”

The clerk shrugs. “Too Gryffindorish,” she explains, the disdain heavy in her voice.

Well.

That seems to settle it, doesn’t it?

“I’ll take him.”

The clerk clearly wasn’t expecting him to actually _want_ one of the animals. “Really? Sure your parents won’t mind, kid?”

“I’ve got my own money that I’m allowed to spend as I see fit,” Harry replies. “Besides, dad’s constant companion is a black dog that’s still a little iffy on following basic commands and big enough to eat a bloody hippogriff.” Which is true enough, even if it’s said in the wrong tense.

The woman holds up her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Sure, sure,” she nods. “You know that snakes aren’t allowed at Hogwarts,” she adds and he admires her tenacity to make sure that he’s sure.

“Technically,” he replies and grins.

She snorts. “Technically,” she agrees with a bob of her head. “So I’m guessing you’ll need a full set up for him?”

 

* * *

 

Half an hour later Harry is finally settling the gorgeous creature’s habitat on the floor of his studio, various supplies and informational booklets arrayed around him. “ _We’re going to have to figure out a name for you,”_ he hisses as he eyes the glowing coils as they slowly move around the new enclosure, investigating. “ _Unless you’ve already got a name, that is.”_

The snake freezes, half coiled over the pre-charmed rock, and raises its head until its eyes are nearly level with Harry’s.

“ _You speak.”_

_“I do,”_ Harry smiles. It’s perhaps his first real smile since… well. It’s been a while. “ _I would have introduced myself in the shop but I’m trying to pass unnoticed for a little bit. Being able to speak to snakes is considered rather… remarkable.”_

_“Humans do startle rather easily,”_ the snake agrees. “ _They are always crying like a new caught mouse.”_

Harry decides that he is going to quite like having a pet that can talk back.

 

* * *

 

Unnamed snake in his trunk aside, he still needs an owl and he’s still a bloody sentimental idiot which is why he finds himself holding a beautiful white owl on his arm, softly stroking her breast while tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

“Hello girl,” he murmurs.

 

* * *

 

There is only one place left to visit after that and it's the place that Harry’s been dreading visiting since he stepped foot in Diagon Alley. He pauses outside of the narrow little shop and stares up at the sign for a long time before he sighs, reaches for what’s left of his Gryffindor courage, and ducks inside.

It’s as crowded as he remembers, little boxes piled haphazardly in stacks that reach the ceiling and layered over every piece of furniture until every space is filled save for the bit of standing space at the very front of the shop and the narrow maze that leads around the boxes. As dusty as he remembers too, he thinks as he holds back a sneeze and watches the dust motes dance in the filtered beams of light that stream through half covered windows. This time though he can feel the hum of magic in the shop, subtle and soft like the buzzing of a bee’s wings, but there all the same. An entire river of it just _waiting_.

His fingers twitch.

“Ah, Mr. Potter,” a soft, breathy voice welcomes as the familiar image of Mr. Ollivander materializes out of the shadows, “I was wondering when you might be visiting me. A little earlier, are you not?” Harry opens his mouth, probably to say something stupid and ill advised but the wand maker continues without pausing. “I remember the day your mother walked through those doors to buy her first wand.  Willow. Ten and a quarter inches. Swishy. Lovely for charms work. Your father on the other hand favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable and with a bit more raw power – an excellent wand for transfiguration. Well, I say _favored_ but it’s really the wand who chooses the wizard.” He pauses and peers down at Harry with pale eyes that stare straight down to the core of him.  Harry fights the urge to flinch back from the wand maker’s all seeing gaze.

If there is anyone in Diagon Alley that can see through him it will be this man and Harry doesn’t know if that reassures him or terrifies him. Probably a bit of both if he’s being honest.

“Hmmm,” the man muses after several moments of study. “You will be a tricky customer, I think.”

Harry swallows. “Why do you say that sir?” But the wand maker’s lips just twitch in a smile. And Harry doesn’t press him. He knows he is going to be a tricky customer. He certainly was the first time and he doesn’t imagine things have changed that much.

“Your wand arm?” he asks instead, pulling a measuring tape from his pocket and Harry obligingly holds out his right arm. Just like last time the tape begins taking measurements while Ollivander turns around and promptly disappears into the maze of wand boxes. By the time he returns the tape is measuring the distance between his nostrils and Harry is fighting the urge to bat it away. “Here. Cherry and unicorn hair. Pliant. Just pick it up and give it a flick.”

Harry sighs and does as instructed.

The cash register explodes.

“Oh my,” Ollivander looks rather impressed as he stares at the sprawl of gold and silver and bronze raining off the edge of his front counter. “Not that one. Here.  Ash and dragon heartstring, ten and half inches…”

A pile of paperwork is thrown violently into the air and falls to the ground as little more than confetti.

“No. No. Clearly not.  Walnut and dragon heartstring, rigid and… obviously not. How about Ebony and unicorn … Merlin! Clearly that is not acceptable. Let’s try…”

And so it goes, just like last time. Wand after wand shoved into his hands only to be rejected in a rather spectacular way that sets something on fire or destroys another piece of the shop. Ollivander, contrary to any sense whatsoever, looks almost delighted by each failure. Harry just sighs and keeps flicking wands until his wrist is sore.  

 “Interesting, Mr. Potter, very interesting. I knew you’d be a tricky one,” the wand maker mutters under his breath as he stands in front of his shelves, half a dozen wand boxes clutched in his arms. The front of the shop is an absolute wreck. The windows have been _reparo_ ’d at least a dozen times and Harry’s lost count of the fires that have had to be put out or the wands that have been knocked over. “Hmmm…” he pauses suddenly and turns back, his eyes widening as they flick up to Harry’s forehead where his scar is still covered by an unruly fringe of bubblegum pink hair. “I wonder…”

Harry slumps in relief as the man tosses all of the boxes in his arms onto the floor and disappears back into the interior. _Finally_.

When he returns the older man is slow and hesitant, an open box cradled in his hands. “They’re very curious things, wands,” he murmurs. “Very few trees can produce wood suitable for focusing magic and wand cores are notoriously difficult to source. I could have an entire handful of unicorn hair and only find a single strand to be suitable. I could pluck an entire phoenix bare and only come up with one feather with the strength to be the heart of a wand. Never mind all the trouble that ensues trying to match a core to a block of wood.” Harry listens, absolutely fascinated at this bit of insight. So much of his life – and the war that has consumed it - has been inadvertently decided by wand lore that he can’t help but greedily soak it up like a parched sponge. “The contents of this shop are the results of several lifetimes of work. Mine. My father’s. My grandfather’s. It is a never ending puzzle to fit all the pieces together and then to help match the right wand to the right wizard and sometimes we don’t get it right.”

Harry can’t stop the questioning noise that falls out of his mouth.

“Tell me, Mr. Potter, what you think of this wand.” Harry reaches for the wand only to stop, his fingers hovering over the box as the bottom drops out of his stomach. There, beneath his fingers, is a familiar holly and phoenix wand.

Shattered.

No, shattered is not the right word. It looks like it has exploded, erupted like some long suppressed volcano, the wood burst open until it is nothing more than an array of slivers surrounding a slender  crimson and gold feather. Slivers of wood that have been scorched.

“…sir?” he manages to croak out after several stunned moments.

“Go ahead,” the wand maker urges quietly. “Pick it up.”

The only thing he can pick up is the feather – _Fawkes’_ feather – and the moment he touches it a familiar heat blooms in his arm and races through his blood. He can almost hear the bird singing.

Ollivander sighs and suddenly looks decades older than he had a moment before, shoulder slumping as he stares down at the feather clutched in Harry’s tiny hand. “Curious, Mr. Potter. Very curious.”

“What is, sir?”

“I remember every wand I’ve ever made, ever wand I’ve ever sold. Every one. And the phoenix that gave that feather,” he nods his head at the feather that Harry can’t bring himself to let go of, “did, in fact, give one other feather. Those two wands were some of the easiest I have ever made. They went together so smoothly. Holly, eleven inches, and nice and supple.  A wand well suited to balancing a quick tempered wizard who might frequently find himself in dangerous situations. Coupled with the phoenix feather… well. It’s a very unusual combination. I have waited almost sixty years to see who this wand might go to. But it’s brother… thirteen and a half inches. Yew.  A fierce, singular wand. One of the most powerful I’ve ever made and in need of an equally singular wizard to wield it. Excellent for dueling. It’s the wand that gave you that scar.” Softly, reverently, Ollivander brushes the tip of one finger against the lightning bolt on Harry’s head and Harry shivers. “The holly. It would have worked for you, I think, had the feather not destroyed it.”

The sight of the holly splinters in the cloth lined box make Harry want to cry. Merlin, it’s just wood, but it had been – _would have been_  - his wand. His faithful wand that had introduced him to magic. That had seen him through his first lessons. That had held off a hundred dementors. That had dueled Voldemort. That had tried to _crucio_ Bellatrix Lestrange. That had nearly killed Draco Malfoy. That had met its end in Godrics Hollow and that he hadn’t been able to throw away. Not even when it had been broken and dead, with not a glimmer of magic or sentience left in it. That wand had been as much a part of his body as his arm.

 “It caused quite the fuss. Woke me up at the crack of dawn this morning with a bang. It happens sometimes, that the core rejects the wood. Not often, but sometimes. Sometimes things… change.” Harry doesn’t dare look away. He doesn’t even dare _breathe_. Ollivander offers him a kind look and tucks the remnants of the holly wand beneath his arm. “Come along then, Mr. Potter. Let us see if we can find something acceptable to your feather.”

 

* * *

 

Ollivander leads him to a lower level that, in true wizarding fashion, is about ten times the size of what it should be and far brighter than any basement level has any business being. It’s lit by lamps hanging in regular intervals from the ceiling and an entire wall of windows across the back surrounded by a well on the exterior to allow natural, not magical, light to filter in. The entire space is open and airy, a study in worn, golden, polished woods with the smell of freshly cut wood hanging sweet in the air. There is a long, scarred workbench down the center of the room with a handful of wands in various stages of completion adorning its surface and the walls are lined with cabinets and shelving. The cabinetry is little more than long, shallow drawers piled one on top of the other. The shelves hold hundreds, if not thousands, of little bottles. If Harry looks closely enough he can see that each one contains a potential wand core: the silvery shimmer of a unicorn hair, the purple-red strands of a dragon’s heartstrings, or even the occasional glimmer and flash of a phoenix feather.

“Very well, Mr. Potter, please have a look,” the wand maker invites as he makes a sharp flicking motion with his own wand and all of the drawers slide open with a series of clicks. “Keep the feather in your hand and run it over the pieces. Let me know when you find the right one.”

“…the right one?”

The man smiles, giving the drawers a fond, if exasperated glance. “You’ll know,” he promises and settles down on a stool to wait. Clearly, he expects this process to be a long one.

Considering the bloody mess they’ve left upstairs Harry can’t say that he disagrees.

The drawers hold nothing but wood. Piece upon piece in every color from stark white to a rich red-brown to the deepest of blacks, each probably a foot and a half in length and a little over an inch in diameter. With a quick glance at Mr. Ollivander to make sure he’s doing it right, Harry lowers his rand hand and strokes it slowly across the woods.

They’re cold.

Bloody, _fucking_ cold.

Stick-his-hand-in-a-dementer-and-keep-it-there cold.

Swimming-naked-in-the-Black-Lake-in-February cold.

He yanks his hand with a hiss and glares at the wood. Behind him, Ollivander lets out a little laugh. “So cold it burns, doesn’t it?” he asks and Harry nods.

“Yeah.”

“You’ll know when you find the right one,” the wand maker repeats and Harry… well. He’s got to go back to the drawers of freezing wood, doesn’t he? He needs a bloody wand and _apparently_ the feather in his hand, the feather that ties him to Voldemort, to _Tom Riddle_ , almost as much as the scar on his forehead has decided that the holly is no longer good enough for it.

_Sometimes things change_ , Ollivander’s voice echoes in his head.

And isn’t that the understatement of the century.

The Harry of now is a completely different person than the boy who walked into this shop the first time. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised that his original wand has self destructed rather than come to his hand. It still hurts though.

He sighs and drags his hand across another drawer of wood pieces, the surfaces practically silky beneath his touch.

Nothing.

Nothing but cold.

Not for this drawer or the next one or the one after that. Or for any of the ones that come after.

Occasionally there’s a glimmer, a spark against his skin that’s like catching the glint of light of light off a mirror out of the corner of his eyes but nothing ever comes of it. By the time he goes back the glimmer is gone, the wood cold and ungiving beneath his touch.

Possibilities, he thinks.

Options that might have played out in a different world for a different Harry Potter.

But not here.

Not for him.

He’s three quarters of the way around the room when he finds it. It’s not just a warmth against his fingertips or a glimmer that he catches at the edge of his gaze. It’s a bloody inferno. It’s fiendfyre racing up arm and digging into his heart, scorching through his veins and his nerves until he feels like he might combust.

Ollivander is at his side instantly. “Which one?” he asks and Harry hands it to him.

It is black, so black that it practically eats the light inside of the studio, a beautiful swirl of darkness that howls gleefully beneath his touch.

The wand maker takes it reverently. “Interesting,” he breathes.

 

* * *

 

Harry is not quite sure how much time it takes to finish his wand. An hour, certainly. Maybe two. Maybe more. At some point a house elf pops in with tea and a sandwich that Harry inhales gratefully. Once Ollivander has to get up and return to the main shop when a twinkling little bell announces that he has a customer but he’s back within twenty minutes – _the lucky bastard,_ Harry thinks, directing his thoughts to the customer even now stepping back onto the street. Other than that, though, the man remains unmoved for the entire duration.

Twice he calls Harry over to lay his hand against the wood and the feather and he stares, seeing something beneath the increased hum of magic in the air. The phantom of what the wand wants to be, maybe. Harry just goes where Ollivander tells him to and otherwise sits on a stool a few feet away and watches in silence as the other man carefully turns the wood and the feather into a piece of art. Into a tool. Into a weapon.

Harry is nervous, impatient, his knee jumping relentlessly but he doesn’t move from his stool unless told to. He’s rash and has had more than his share of idiotic moments but he’s not stupid. He stays put and waits and focuses on keeping his hair pink.

Harry’s fairly certain he’s never focused so bloody hard on something in his life. Except for catching the snitch. Maybe.

That probably says bad things about him.

When Ollivander finishes he slumps back on his stool with a sigh and holds out his hand toward Harry. “Ebony and phoenix feather,” he croaks. “Eleven and three quarter inches. Firm.”

It’s beautiful.

Harry is captivated. Enthralled. Caught like a teenaged Ron Weasley in front a dozen Veela.

It is a bit thinner than the Holly wand, thinner than a muggle pencil near the tip and gradually thickening until it’s a little more than half an inch in diameter at the thickest part of the handle, which then thins and turns in a wide hook that looks like it will rest comfortably around the heel of his palm. The majority of the wand is that inky, bottomless black and shined it loos more like a piece of  dark glass instead of wood. It is near the small lip separating the main blade of the wand from the hilt of it that the soft, wispy swirls of cream begin to appear. It’s not much, just a touch here and there as the grain spirals around the handle. They gleam like stars in the sky, the swirl and spread of a galaxy across the endless black of space.

It is smooth and sleek and simple.

It is nothing but a wand. It doesn’t need to be anything more.

The moment Harry touches it fireworks go off in his head and his magic rises to meet it like a cold tide, inexorable and fathomless.

“It’s perfect,” he tells the wand maker and it may be the most honest thing that has ever come out of his mouth.  Ever.

Ollivander gives him a weary smile that only pulls at half of his mouth. “I am glad that it suits you. It is a formidable wand. I expect you will do great things with it, Mr. Potter. Great things.”

Harry shivers and cradles the wand to his chest. “I’m going to try,” he murmurs and beneath his fingertips the wand hums in agreement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Because every parseltongue should have a snake, damn it. For the curious: the color morphs of the boas in this chapter are ghost and moonglow (the two younger ones) and Harry's is a lipstick sunglow. 
> 
> 2\. I have approximately 9000 thoughts on wand lore so I absolutely had to take the chance to give Harry a (slightly) different wand. I think the holly definitely worked as a representation for canon Harry but, as Harry himself notes, he's a very different person now than he was the first time he bought a wand. I very much wanted to keep the brother wand aspect but I wanted to acknowledge that change so after way too long staring at the HP wiki I settled on Ebony for the wood. It is described as a wood that "is happiest in the hand of those with the courage to be themselves. Frequently non-conformist, highly individual or comfortable with the status of outsider... the ebony wand’s perfect match is one who will hold fast to his or her beliefs, no matter what the external pressure, and will not be swayed lightly from their purpose" which I absolutely believe summarizes what I want to do with this Harry. 
> 
> 3\. I very nearly split this into two chapters but I figured that you've been waiting for-fucking-ever for it and absolutely deserve the dubious present of having this fic double in size all at once. Also, I kind of wanted to keep all the shopping stuff together. 
> 
> Next chapter: Harry tries to figure out A Plan (and he has no idea what the fuck he's doing, but by Merlin that's never stopped him before).


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I can't believe the love the last chapter got. Seriously, your comments made me all mushy and heart eyed... and are probably entirely responsible for this chapter. It's a bit of a filler/foundational chapter but it just didn't feel right to jump straight from the last chapter to the Hogwarts Express. 
> 
> Legit author notes: This absolutely will be a Tom x Harry fic. There will probably be some brief pairings of Harry with other characters before he gets together with Tom, but Tom's his endgame. I also removed the crack tag from this fic because it has absolutely taken on a life of its own and is not headed in the crack direction that I'd thought it would go.

After spending no small amount of time thinking about the portkeys to the various Potter properties currently sitting in a magical pouch in his pocket Harry does a bit of shopping in the muggle world – because no matter how determined he is to fit in to his new world, he’s not giving up wearing muggle jeans – and takes a cab back to Kings Cross. There he finds a quiet, out of the way broom closet with a broken door handle that has – judging by the layer of dust on everything – not been touched in quite some time and once out of the sight of prying eyes, he resizes his trunk and climbs inside.

The flat is a mess of shopping bags spread across the hardwood floors, a riot of colors against the off white of the walls and Hedwig is sitting on a stand in one corner, her eyes fixed speculatively on the long tank set up against the nearby wall. The snake, at least, is happily settled and fast asleep.

The sight of...  everything, is enough to make something warm swell almost uncomfortably in Harry’s chest. “Well,” he announces to the room, earning a long, slow blink from Hedwig, “here we are.” The owl goes back to staring at the snake and Harry smiles, blinking away the tears that prick at the corner of his eyes.

And then he gets to work.

He needs a plan but first, first he needs to somehow organize this mess. Maybe that will help organize his mind so he can actually think without bursting into tears or having his magic accidentally shatter the glass in the faux windows on the far side of the room.

He finds his clothes first and changes into a pair of denims and t-shirt that _are new and actually fit_ – and part of him wonders if that knowledge is ever going to stop sending a little thrill through him - after taking a moment in the loo to splash water on the face. The bathroom, like the rest of the flat, isn’t overly large but certainly has more than enough room for one person. It is done in tasteful neutrals: off white walls and a black and white tiled floor with a standard seeming white tub set in a tiled alcove and equipped with a showerhead sticking from the wall. In the living space the lack of color reminds him too much of that fluffy in-between place but in bathroom he actually likes it.

 It’s bright, airy, clean, and _his_.  Plus the jewel toned towels that he bought won’t clash with anything.

The only other space in the flat is a roomy dressing room with one wall devoted to drawers and a large mirror and another half filled with shelves clearly meant for shoes. The rest of it is outfitted with rods that are thankfully - because Harry hadn’t even thought to buy some - half full of empty hangers.  And now that he’s dressed in something slightly more appropriate for sorting through all the bags and packages he had acquired he sets to work filling up the drawers and hangers and shelves. Of course, referring to it as _‘filling them up’_ is laughable at best. He’d bought what he considered to be a very reasonable number of clothes – extravagant, even, compared to the last seventeen years of his life – and they barely take up a third of the available space.

It’s soothing though. Soothing to set the few pairs of shoes on the shelf. Soothing to unload pants and socks and t shirts into drawers. Soothing to hang up robes and trousers and shirts and coats and cloaks, to hang enchanted scarves and ties over hooks.

It’s soothing to fold his towels and washcloths and set them away in the cupboard next to the sink, leaving one set out that he hangs next to the tub. Soothing to put his toiletries on the ledge next to the tub and on the countertop next to the sink and to place the few first aid items and medicinal potions that he’d bought in the medicine cabinet hanging over the toilet. Soothing to put the plush black rug on the floor to protect his feet from the cold tile.

It’s soothing to sort through the rest of his belongings. He doesn’t have any shelves or extra trunks and the cupboards in the small kitchen are reserved for the groceries and the minimal pots, pans, dishes, and cutlery that he’d bought but he can sort his school specific items into one neat pile and organize everything else as best as he can.

It’s soothes something dark and lonely and cold coiled in the center of his chest, something he hadn’t even realized was there until the quiet act of putting _his things_ away in _his flat_ quieted it. He’s never had a home, he realizes. He’s never had a place that was _his_. The closest he’s ever gotten has been his dorm room in Gryffindor tower… or his bloody cupboard.

But this is his. Just his. No one else has had it before him. No one else even knows it exists.

Harry lets out a little laugh and dashes the tears that have been leaking from his eyes while he’s standing here surveying his little kingdom. “Don’t mind me,” he tells Hedwig when she tips her head and hoots at him. “It’s been a long day.”

Understatement.

It has, quite possibly been the longest day of his life. Lives. Because the last time he really slept was before they broke into Gringotts – if he could actually call that tossing and turning ‘ _sleep_ ’. Merlin, no wonder he feels exhausted. But he’s not going to bed just yet. He can’t. Because no sleep will wait for him there until he has some sort of… direction and organization to his thoughts.

Not for the first time he wishes he were a better bloody occlumens. Somewhere, somewhen in the long, miserable hours spent in a magical tent with hunger pains licking at his belly and a desperate, angry horcrux seeping into his every thought and emotion Hermione had at least managed to beat – by sheer bloody repetition – the basics of occlumency into his brain. He can organize his thoughts, at least a little, now. If he hadn’t managed to learn at least that much he doubts he would have been able to understand the magnitude of the knowledge given to him by Snape’s memories; doubts he would have been to put the pieces together fast enough to make his way out to the Forbidden Forest without anyone stopping him. He still can’t successfully clear his mind half the time and he wonders how much of that is him and how much of it is the result of fighting against the nature of the horcrux that lives inside of him.

It’s a thought that he quietly shelves for later.

Right now he needs to know what he’s going to do.

He needs a plan.

He takes a deep breath and then another and then one more for good measure and goes to make himself something to eat.

After he’s consumed a sandwich he settles down with a fresh pot of tea, a handful of biscuits, one of his new pens, an array of inks, and the journal. For a moment he just sits there, worrying at his bottom lip as he stares at the blank, creamy pages and wonders how the hell he is supposed to do this. Plans are… not his forte. In fact, his general approach to plans can be classified as equal parts bullshit, dumb luck, and rash bravery/willful stupidity. He knows this. Has known it for years. Snape’s snipes about his intelligence and arrogance wouldn’t have pricked so much if he’d been able to brush them off as obvious falsehoods. But it had been what was expected of him and it had, for the most part, worked in his favor.

But if the last nine months in that fucking tent has taught him anything, _anything at all_ , it is how to be patient and how to take a moment to bloody _think_.

So.

A plan.

Hermione, no doubt, would have him write out and organize all the necessary information – horcruxes, Dumbledore, Voldemort, Snape, at least a half dozen other people, the prophecy, the Deathly Hollows, and his entire bloody life. Probably color code it and cross index it. And yeah… that’s, that’s not happening. Not that it wouldn’t be bloody useful to have all that information written down and Harry doesn’t doubt that it will happen but… what would he even _do_ with all of it in one location?

Cry, probably.

Or break something.

Things tend to explode when he gets emotional. He should probably work on that.

But really, who is he kidding here? “I have no idea what I’m doing,” he tells Hedwig. “ _None_ ,” he hisses at the snake that’s now lounging lazily on top of a tank and watching him with what Harry can only assume is curiosity.

“ _What are you trying to do? You taste like prey about to be caught,”_ the snake tells him and really, that’s not surprising.

“ _Not screw things up,”_ Harry mutters and runs his fingers down the warm, dry scales of the snake’s back. In the past, his normal reaction to a threat, to any problem really, had been to charge in and hope for the bloody best. Obviously, that’s not going to work this time around. The whole point is to do something _different_. He’s already lived the brash and brave life once and look what that fucking got him – dead. Dead, having watched the entire wizarding world be ripped apart by prejudice and war, having watched people he cared about – people that actually _cared about him_ – die. Because of him. Because he had to be right, because the only bloody plan in his brain was _attack_.

No, he definitely needs to do things differently this time. Completely different – though simply doing everything the opposite of the way he had the first time sounds a bit like cheating.

“Well,” he muses after a thoughtful moment, “the Sorting Hat _did_ originally want to put me in Slytherin.”

And sure, some of that is probably the result of the piece of Tom Marvolo Riddle that’s riding around in his body but Harry’s not totally stupid. He’s spent almost a year in a tent – and a handful of summers before that – with nothing to do but think, trapped inside his own head with only his own mind for conversation. And he’s willing to admit, here, when it’s just him and his owl and his snake that Harry Potter is more a serpent than a lion.

 Planning skills notwithstanding.

So maybe he needs to approach this like a Slytherin. He needs to look at the whole situation with cunning, ambition, and a healthy dose of self-preservation. That’s going to be new. Mostly. He’s never been overly ambitious for himself, his greatest wish simply being to blend in and be normal, but he gave his entire life – quite literally – in the pursuit of someone else’s ambition. Now, perhaps, it’s time for some ambition of his own and really, isn’t that what he’s been doing since he woke up this morning?

_What does he, Harry Potter, want?_

It all seems to circle back to that.

“What do I want?” he repeats. It feels weird to say it out loud. Even weirder than it felt to think it, to feel it. It seems preposterous somehow that he should get to choose.

But he does. He has been. He’s sitting in proof of it.

So yes, he needs to write down the information, anything he thinks might be useful, but first…

Harry selects a beautiful, deep blue ink and, after one more moment of thought, writes _WHAT I WANT_ in neat, blocky letters across the top of the first page.

Another pause and then, “Alright,” he tells himself. “You can do this.”

He _can_.

After another moment of consideration – _not_ hesitation, thank you very much – he writes _‘be my own person’_ as the first bullet point. And if it happens to be barely legible that’s because even after seven years of writing with quill and ink he’s never managed anything more than what could politely be termed as a tidy scrawl and not because his hands won’t stop bloody shaking.

Also, what does _be my own person_  even mean? Harry has no idea.

Well, no. That’s not quite true. He’s ten bloody years too late to prevent himself from being The Boy Who Lived but he’s not going to let that _own_ him this time around. No, he can’t escape it and he can’t ignore it so _he_ will own _it_. He will define it with himself instead of letting it define him. He won’t let it make him Dumbledore’s champion or Voldemort’s enemy. He won’t let it force him into being the  bloody _Chosen One_. Not again.

Biting back the snarl that’s purring at the base of his throat Harry takes a deep breath and rubs his thumb across the band of his ring, the cool metal a grounding force against his skin. Already, everything has changed.

_That’s done,_ he reminds himself. _It’s over. It’s never going to happen again. I won’t let it._

Still, he writes the basic points of it on his list just in case he ever needs a reminder.  

After another hesitant moment he hastily adds, ‘ _not a replacement or replica of my parents’_ to the list.

Merlin, but that bloody hurts to write, even if it is true.

And he knows it is true. He knows he will never be James bloody Potter because he has spent years chasing after every scrap of approval given in his dead father’s name. Or had anyway, until the moment he’d watched his father and godfather hang Snape upside down in front of half of the school. And even then…

Harry shakes his head. His father loved him – _loves_ him, if he dares trust the resurrection stone – but once upon a time he had, in his own way, been as bad as Dudley. Or Malfoy. And Harry doesn’t doubt that Snape gave as good as he got - even if it was three and a rat to one – but he didn’t grow up like his father or his mum. He grew up with the Dursleys. He grew up hated and starved and _alone_ and there is part of him that will always wonder how his dad and Sirius – and his mum, for that matter – would have treated him had he shown up as a student in their time in Dudley’s ratty, oversized hand-me-downs and – without the bias against his parents’ killer – been sorted in Slytherin. 

He’ll never know for sure but he suspects that it wouldn’t have turned out well for him.

On the flip side of that, he doesn’t want to be his mum either. He doesn't want to be all that remains of her, a guilt fueled memory trapped in a boy’s body for Dumbledore to beat and bait and trap Snape with.

They gave their lives for him and they loved – _love_ – him and he will never stop being grateful for that but he wants to be something more than an embodiment of their memories. He wants to be more than _Lily and James’ son_.

Something that, he acknowledges with a heavy sigh, is going to be bloody _difficult_. And he’s out flown a fucking dragon.

The easiest thing to change, of course, will be his Hogwarts house. Everyone expects him to be in Gryffindor, _like his parents_ , and him being sorted there only reinforced the insubstantial idea everyone had of him by way of his parents’ lives and deaths.

Honestly, he’s not even sure he could convince the Sorting Hat to put him in Gryffindor again even if wanted to be there.  Even now, part of him _does_ want to be there in that high, windowed tower with the crimson draperies and the comfortable couches and bubble like chairs pulled up to scarred desktops. It’s one of the closest things he’s ever had to a home and it calls to him in its familiarity, the promise of a lifetime of habits just waiting for him to slip back into.

“Different,” he reminds himself as he gets up to clean out the teapot and use the loo. “You have to do things differently.”

He ends up staring at himself in the mirror over the bathroom sink, fingers gripping the edge of the vanity until they turn pale. That is the other thing that is going to have be different. At seventeen, almost eighteen, he had finally grown into his own person. Age and puberty had brought out hints of his mum – beyond the green of his eyes, of course – in his face and given him features that were all his own, leaving him with a normal passing resemblance to his parents but not making him their duplicate. Like he is now. Merlin, he’d forgotten just how much he looked like pictures of his dad at this age.  Like someone had plucked his dad – well, a shorter, tinier, paler version – of his dad out of his school photos and plopped him down in Harry’s stead.

He’d liked that, the first time around. Liked the visible reminder that he hadn’t always been utterly alone. That he had come from someplace.

Not this time though. This time he’s more than the scared little boy who knew nothing but the darkness of the cupboard under the stairs and the Dursleys.

So he needs to make himself look less like his father.

Which means he needs to find some way to control and change his hair. Maybe if he grows it longer? Surely he can manage that without it regressing. His hair had always returned to this mess after Aunt Petunia had tried to cow or destroy it because Harry had wanted it to. Perhaps, it will grow longer if he wishes it? There are potions that he can buy to do that but he’d rather avoid going back to the alley. Owl order then, if doing it by sheer will doesn’t work.

And the glasses. He’d love to be rid of them completely but his eyes are shit and he knows it. New glasses then and maybe some contacts. He’s already taken care of a new wardrobe. The rest will be up to him and how he acts.

_It’s our choices that make us who we are_ , he murmurs inside of his head and something suspiciously like a laugh bubbles in his chest. His mind is still muddled, his thoughts chaotic, but he thinks that maybe, somewhere in all of this he has – if not an actual plan – than at least a starting point.

It will have to do for now.

 

* * *

 

The problem with time travel, Harry decides as he sits on bench amongst the morning bustle of Kings Cross, is that the more changes he makes the less useful his knowledge of the future will be. The more he changes, the less he will know.

In the instance of his letter, it’s probably not going to change much. His first arrived by muggle post. He’s not sure if there will still be a letter lying on the rug in front of the door this morning or if the inevitable magic involved in them will mean that it will get delivered right to this spot in – Harry glances at the muggle watch on his wrist – approximately thirty minutes, give or take. He’s inclined to believe – and hoping – for the latter.

Of course, whether it comes by owl or whether Hagrid is going to suddenly be pushing through the crowd, booming like a jolly cannon remains to be seen.

As fond as he is of the half-giant, he’s sincerely hoping for the former.

So any changes to how he receives his letter are probably rather minimal in the grand scheme of things and they’re changes that he’s okay with happening, however it turns out. Not that he really has a choice, of course, given how he had rushed out of the Dursleys without thinking. Not that he would have stayed. Ever.

On the other hand, rushing out to the Little Hangleton and fetching the Resurrection Stone and horcrux from the ruins of the Gaunt shack – like part of him very, very much wants to – would probably cause a great number of problems. If nothing else, should he fail to actually get the ring, he has left a trail for Dumbledore to follow even if it is only in the memories of the people that see and dismiss his presence. Likewise, making his way to the Burrow and dragging Wormtail into the Ministry would tip his hand in far too many ways, likely exposing him utterly.

No, he is going to have to move slowly – more slowly than he would like, anyway – and build up some sort of support base because he still looks like a too small eleven year old and not a battle hardened young adult.

Ugh. That’s going to be a nightmare.

Of course, he’s got five weeks to figure out how to deal with it and to figure out how he _is_ going to handle going back to Hogwarts and clearing Sirius’ name. The ring, he suspects, will have to wait until at least next summer but theoretically, at least, he’ll be able to retrieve the diadem. He’s not entirely sure _what_ he’s going to do about Tom Marvolo Riddle – or the wraith currently living on the back of the Quirrell’s head – but he knows that he doesn’t want the horcruxes to be where Dumbledore can get them.

Or Voldemort. Not yet.

Rubbing at his face, Harry tips his head back, breathes, and runs through the mental exercises Hermione had tried to teach him to help clear his mind. It certainly doesn’t do that but he feels more settled afterward and less like he’s about to break down again. Of course the six hours of sleep he’d managed to get the night before had helped a great deal on that front as well. It’d been one of the best nights of sleep he’d ever had. No Dursleys, no Death Eaters, no desperate horcruxes. Just him and the pallet of blankets he’d made up on the floor, lacking a proper bed to put them on. Enough furniture to furnish a small flat had been one of those things that he’d suspected that even the wizarding world would raise an eyebrow at a child buying on their own.  He’ll have to owl order some furniture or maybe there will be some in the Room of Requirement that Hogwarts will let him have.

In the somewhat calmed racing of his head he makes a note.

And speaking of Hogwarts…

“Hello there, lovely thing,” he murmurs, opening his eyes to smile at the familiar face of one of the school’s tawny barn owls who has taken up residence on the back of the bench and is hooting at him insistently. “Is this for me?” he asks, picking up the thick envelope that the owl dropped into his lap. The owl bobs her head. “Do you mind waiting around for my reply?” Another bob and Harry smiles as he offers her the owl treat he had stashed in his pocket hours ago, hoping that he would get a chance to use it.

Owl taken care of, Harry can’t resist turning the envelope over to look at the address  written gracefully in black ink.

 

_Harry Potter_

_The Bench Beneath the Clock_

_Platform 7_

_Kings Cross Station_

_London, England_

Well, at least that’s better than  ‘The Cupboard Under the Stairs’.

Breaking the seal, Harry pulls the sheets of folded parchment from within and scans it quickly. The letters themselves are exactly as he remembers and there’s nothing surprising on the supply list. He certainly has everything required – and then some. Dropping his acceptance letter onto the bench he pulls the short, polite reply he had penned this morning in the neatest handwriting he could manage and offers it to the owl. “This is for you.” The owl gives him a long, surprised blink and Harry just smiles, waiting patiently until the bird grasps the letter in its talons and lifts into the air.

He sits on the bench until it nothing but a speck in the sky and then he carefully rips the letter into dozens of tiny little pieces which he dumps in the closest garbage bin as he walks past. He doesn’t _think_ that there are any spells on the letter – it certainly hadn’t felt that way but even though the last few years have honed his senses sharply he doesn’t dare think that he could find something if, say, Dumbledore wanted to truly hide it – but better safe than sorry.

Ten minutes later he’s disappeared into the swirl of humanity filling London’s streets.

 

* * *

 

Harry spends the next five weeks reading. Well, not entirely. But mostly. Definitely mostly. As suspected the book on the history of the pureblooded families and their influence in the Wizengamot is drier than burnt, day old toast but he only makes himself read one page of that per day and frequently breaks it up with other, more interesting books. The booklets written to introduce muggleborns to the Wizarding World are dry but certainly informative or at least more informative than the _absolutely bloody nothing_ that he’d had the first time. The textbooks are a review. Mostly, anyway, though probably not as much of one as they should be. In the evening he curls up in his bed and reads through the children’s stories and the popular works of wizarding fiction. He reads his favorites out loud to the snake – whom, after consulting a baby name book and the snake himself, consents to be called Inigo. Harry’s not sure the constrictor actually gets anything out of the experience but it gives him a chance to practice speaking parseltongue.

When he’s not reading he’s making notes in the journal and before long his list of wants has expanded to include things like: _do well at school, have a fulfilling career, have a family, never see the Dursleys again, free Sirius and see that his name is legally cleared, improved creature rights, free Snape from life debt, prevent the return of crazy, snake-faced Voldemort,_ and a half dozen other notations. Further on he’s started writing down all the details of his Hogwarts life could possibly be useful, arranging them in a neat timeline.

When he’s not reading, writing, or letting all of his thoughts seep in his head regarding the ongoing task of making A Plan he works on the parts of said plan that he already knows. After much thought he sends Hedwig off to _Havesmere & Brown Cosmetics and Soaping Co_ with an order for hair growth potion and enough hair care products to make Hermione – or perhaps more accurately, Lavender – proud. When Hedwig returns the potion goes in the medicine cabinet and the rest of the products take up residence in his bathroom, filling an entire shelf of the linen closet.  Eventually, he finds a muggle optometrist who is willing to overlook the fact that he is a small child in favor of the cash held in his hand and has his eyes properly examined for the first time in his life. He’d always known that his eyesight is bad – the term _blind as a bat_ bounces around inside his head – but he hadn’t realized just _how bad_ it is until he put on a properly prescribed pair of glasses.

And, after spending his entire life trapped – in the cupboard, at the Dursleys, at Grimmauld Place, at school – Harry explores. He doesn’t go further than London but really, outside of a burning desire to go to the beach and a persistent, niggling itch to pay a visit to the Gaunt shack, he doesn’t want or need to.  Instead, he tours the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, and Buckingham Palace. He spends multiple days exploring the British Museum and even, just for kicks and giggles, visits the zoo. He doesn’t free the snake this time, though he does stand and chat with it for nearly half an hour.  Every night is spent in a different location and he finds a quick preference for the many parks, something that allows him to let Hedwig out to hunt and stretch her wings.

Despite the chaos in his mind and the worry that sits in his heart the days are peaceful. Quiet. _His_. Harry hasn’t had days like this in years.

Or ever, really.

So during the day Harry wanders through London and reads his books and tries to plot a new life for himself. When night falls he wraps Inigo around his shoulders like a shawl and sits on the ground and watches Hedwig wing across a star filled sky.

And the days tick down until suddenly, inevitably, it’s the first of September.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the curious: Inigo is the Basque variation of the name Ignatius and means "fiery".


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live! This fic lives! Huzzah.
> 
> So it's been forever and I'd love it if I had some super awesome excuse for that but the sad reality is RL gets crazy and sadly, I have passed the point in my life where I can live off of less than 3 hours of sleep for an extended period of time. Sadness. I'd also really love to say that updates will be much more frequent from now on but... haha. Life is a crazy bitch right now. In the next 4-6 months I'll be selling a house, buying a house, probably renovating a house, and having a baby. (After dealing with infertility issues and a handful of losses to get the kids we do have both the husband and I were completely blindsided by this out of nowhere, should-not-have-technically-been-possible surprise baby. It's been so surreal. Exciting, but you know, pinch me because I'm not entirely sure that I'm not dreaming). So. You know. C.R.A.Z.Y. But I do want to reassure you that this fic has not been abandoned and barring the loss of life/limb/what little remains of my sanity will not be. It might just be a little slow in making it from my brain to word document.
> 
>  
> 
> As always, thank you so much for your support, comments, and kudos. They bring joy to my life. You're wonderful!

“Alright, Harry,” he tells his reflection. “You can do this.”

His reflection blinks back at him. His reflection doesn’t believe him.

That’s okay. Harry doesn’t believe himself either.

“It’s just like a quidditch game,” he tries to tell himself. “Your hands sweat, your stomach heaves, and everything is absolutely bloody fine once you get on the broom.” Except there isn’t a broom to get on and there’s no snitch to catch. There’s just a scarlet steam engine and cars full of school children in various levels of excitement and terror who haven’t had to fight in a war. Who don’t even know that one is coming. Was coming? Would come?

“Only if you screw things up,” Harry mutters and tries, very hard, not to think about all the times he had screwed up. About all the people that are dead because of him. Were dead.

Damn time travel.

Behind him Hedwig hoots and shuffles around in her cage.

“I know, I know,” Harry tells her, glancing at the muggle watch lying on the vanity top. He’d bought it after the first day when he realized that not being able to cast a _tempus_ would not so slowly drive him mad. He’s only taken it off to shower since then and as a result there’s a fine strip of paler flesh around his wrist. His robes will hide it, he’s sure, until the lack of being outside for most of the day pales his skin again. “We’ve still got an hour until the train leaves.” And he’s not sure he’s ready to get on it, his gut churning with nerves and his hands shaking and damp.

Bloody hell, he’d been more confident confronting Voldemort than he is getting on a train.

“You can do this,” he whispers, gripping the edges of the counter until it feels like his hands are going to break. It’s just getting on a train. It’s just the beginning, what feels like the _real_ beginning, of everything. It’s his life. It’s the fate of the wizarding world.

So nothing new, really.

It just felt easier when _the fate of the wizarding world_ could be solved with the murder of a dark wizard by a teenage boy.

“You can do this,” he repeats, a little stronger, and stares at the boy in the mirror. The face that stares back is almost a stranger. Part of that is because it’s been seven years since he’s been eleven years old and his past eleven year old self had never had much inclination or opportunity to look in a mirror. Mostly, though, it’s that his past eleven year old self had never looked like this. Past Harry had been a tiny, scrawny little thing with skin almost translucently pale from spending most of his life in a windowless cupboard. His hair had been an unruly bird’s nest, his glasses round and held together with a half dozen pieces of scotch tape. His clothes had been baggy and worn and despite all of that he had been so fucking innocent that it hurts a little to look back on it.

The kid staring back from the mirror isn’t innocent. His body might be small and scrawny again – though the past month of decent, healthy meals and regular exercise has filled out his face in a way that past him had never managed until months into each school year – but eyes staring back at him are the eyes that have seen a man burned to death and faced down a thousand year old basilisk. They’re the eyes that have seen murder and resurrection and have faced torture and death without flinching. There’s no innocence left in them.  He would have to be a better occlumens than Snape to even dream about hiding it.

He can almost hear the man laughing in his head at the thought, the sound appropriately biting.

It’s oddly steadying.

The physical changes are more noticeable – at least to him. His skin has darkened in the sun, the paleness of it morphing to a burnished gold and the small apothecary of hair care potions and products have done their job. Once a veritable tangle closely resembling a Devil’s Snare, it now falls in thick black waves to just past his shoulders. Half of it is pulled away from his face, exposing the curve of his cheekbones and – more importantly – the thin red line of the scar bisecting his forehead. Seeing the scar in the mirror is the weirdest thing and Harry feels naked with it exposed. More naked than, well, actually _being_ naked.  He’s wearing contacts today, his new glasses carefully stowed in their case and sitting in the top drawer of the vanity next to his toothbrush.  Between that and the lack of hair falling over his forehead he feels bloody vulnerable but everyone knows that the Potters have crappy eyesight.  They’re as well known for it as the Malfoys are for their platinum hair or the Weasleys for their family size.

And he doesn’t want to be a Potter today.

_No_ , he corrects himself silently as he smooths down the buttery soft weave of the black jumper he’d thrown on what feels like ages ago. _I just don’t want to be James Potter_.

Behind him, Hedwig lets out another demanding hoot and Harry smiles. “Alright, alright,” he tells the owl as he shuts the bathroom door behind him. “We can go now. _You are comfortable?”_ he adds, hiss to the coils of pink and gold heaped across the charmed rock.

“ _The mouse was tasty and the rock is warm_ ,” Inigo replies, which Harry thinks means yes.

“ _Enjoy your nap. I’ll come get you tonight once everything is settled._ ” The promise doesn’t warrant more than an assenting flick of the constrictor’s tail but Harry’s not fooled. Having discovered the joy of riding around on a warm blooded creature – especially one that can understand him and be directed towards interesting smells and the patch of sunlight that’s _just right_ – Inigo’s tolerance for being stuck in his cage is limited – even if it is as big as the one at the shop and he’s got it all to himself.

Not that Harry blames him.

A cage is a cage is a cage.

Dudley’s second bedroom had been both better and worse than the cupboard but a prison all the same.

Grimmauld Place and that bloody tent had both, in their own way, been cages.

Even Hogwarts and the Burrow had been cages by the end.

Harry is so very tired of cages.

So, yes, tonight he’ll climb back into his trunk and bring Inigo out with him because the beautiful creature belongs draped around Harry’s shoulders – or coiled against his stomach beneath the warm weight of his bedding - and not stuck behind a centimeter of glass.

“Come on girl,” he murmurs and holds up his arm for Hedwig to fly to and the weight of her landing carefully on his arm is still enough to make his heart skip a beat. “It’s time to go.”

He has a train to catch.

* * *

 

He releases Hedwig before he goes through the barrier, unable to think of a single reason why he should make her sit in her cage for seven or eight hours when she is perfectly capable of flying to Hogwarts on her own. Once she’s gone he locks up his trunk, shrinks it down, and secures it in his trouser pocket before casually strolling out into the hustle and bustle of Kings Cross.

“You can do this,” he reminds himself and, grabbing hold of the last dregs of Gryffindor bravery swimming around in his veins, he walks forward and into the magical world.

Platform Nine and Three Quarters is exactly as he remembers it from his earliest trips: humming and alive. It’s a brilliant chaos of voices and emotion with magic that rubs and curls about his limbs like a friendly cat. It’s easier than he thought it would be to slip through the crowds, even with his scar exposed. He’s not sure whether it’s because he’s lacking a trunk to haul around behind him like nearly half of the school aged children are or if it is simply because he is so small for his age that, at first glance, no one quite thinks that he’s old enough to even be attending Hogwarts.

A bit of both, probably.

Keeping to the edges of the crowd he skirts around familiar faces – he very nearly stumbles at the sight of a younger Cedric Diggory standing with his parents, his expression caught between fondness and an exasperated eye roll – and makes it to the train without incident. He pauses on the steps though, unable to stop himself from looking back over the gathering student body, at the future of the wizarding world when the future looks bright and not shrouded in death and hopelessness.

He can do this. For them. For him. For the lonely, broken monster abandoned under a bench.

He can.

Sure.

Harry lets out a sigh and, just as he turns to go his gaze is caught from across the platform by a pair of pale blue eyes.  For a moment he is frozen, suspended in a single second as his heart begins to pound and his hands begin to sweat as his fingers curl in preparation to catch his wand, a number of curses crowding at the back of his tongue and…

No.

He’s an arrogant, entitled arse – perhaps not without good reason, Harry’s mind notes – and he’s no doubt already done terrible things. But so has Harry. So have a fair number of the people standing on this platform. More even, if he takes in the events of the future or at least, of the future as he lived it.

But right now, at this minute, he hasn’t poorly disposed of a horcrux, enabling it to possess an eleven year old girl and set a thousand year old basilisk on a school full of children. He hasn’t tried to curse Harry or chased him through the Ministry or spent time in Azkaban or lived night and day with a megalomaniac who is extremely disappointed in his life choices.

Right now he’s just an arrogant, entitled, well connected, and bigoted arse who Harry can’t say that he actually knows all that much about. But he knows that the world is nearly as black and white as he had believed it or as Dumbledore had painted it.

There is more to life than good and Death Eaters – and he needs to remember that, even if the scrutiny of that ice blue gaze sends him into immediate flight or fight.

Harry blinks. Time moves forward. He forces his fingers to relax, forces a calming breath of air into his lungs, and respectfully inclines his head before he turns on his heel and disappears into the dim interior of the train, leaving Lucius Malfoy to stare after him. No doubt Draco will find him on the train. Again.

Firmly pushing down the urge to find an abandoned compartment, shut himself in, and ward it like he’d had to ward the fucking tent Harry passes through the first few cars, sparing a glance here and there for the already occupied compartments.

Eleven, he reminds himself, he is _eleven_. He is eleven and he’s just been introduced to magic. He is eleven and he’s apprehensive and excited and awestruck – all of which is actually true, minus the age bit. He is eleven and while the wizarding world is a riot of problems it hasn’t reached the boiling point yet. He is eleven and no one is dead yet. Well, no on he knows. No one he feels responsible for.

He is eleven years old and Merlin, if he doesn’t get his head out of his arse he might as well as continued to waltz to Dumbledore’s whim and gone back and killed what was left of Tom Marvolo Riddle. Or just sat there in that insubstantial train station for eternity and done absolutely nothing. They amount to the same thing, he thinks. As does the constant worry roiling in his gut. He doesn’t know how or why – doesn’t understand it either – but he has a second chance. And maybe it’s not real. Maybe this is all in his head. Maybe he’s never left the cupboard at Number Four and everything from magic and Hogwarts forward is nothing but something a shattered mind has conjured up to explain and escape the abuse of his childhood.

But whether it’s real or not real he has a chance here. A chance to live his life. A chance that he’ll waste if he spends it all worrying that he’ll make mistakes. He’s Harry bloody Potter. Of course he’s going to make mistakes.  He just hopes they’re not the same ones and that when this life ends – whether it be in six years or sixty – that he doesn’t stand at the train station and think of how everything was such a colossal waste.

_What happens next?_

_Why now, my boy, now you get to choose._

“Pardon, is this seat taken?” he asks politely and watches as the pudgy boy sitting huddled next to the window with his hands clenched in his lap nearly jumps out of his skin.

“Oh, uh, yes… I-I mean n-no,” the boy stammers out as he peeks up at Harry from underneath the neatly combed locks of honey blonde hair that Harry knows will someday darken to a deep, chestnut brown. Harry’s pretty sure the boy’s gaze doesn’t reach higher than his chin. “You’re welcome to s-sit there,” he adds after a moment, shoulders rising and straightening in an obvious effort to control his nerves.

“Thanks,” Harry tells him with a smile as he slides into the compartment. “I hope you don’t mind. There are still a lot of empty compartments but…” he shrugs. “I don’t really want to sit alone, you know?” The boy blinks. Harry bites back a sigh. He’d forgotten just how… beaten down the other boy had been in the beginning. As broken as Harry in his own way. “I’m Harry, by the way,” he adds, because if this doesn’t get a bloody reaction than nothing will. “Harry Potter.”

The other boy sits up so fast that he somehow manages to bang the side of his face on the window and – for the first time since they started speaking – looks Harry full in the face. “Y-you a-are … _Merlin_ ,” the boy breathes, gaze latching on to the scar adorning Harry’s forehead. Harry’s not sure whether he’s pleased at the boy’s reaction or disappointed that – once again – it’s his scar and all of the ridiculous nonsense attached to it that people see and not the boy that it marks. “Oh!” the boy lets out a squeak after less than a minute of gawking and promptly turns a red to rival a Weasley’s hair. “F-forgive me. I didn’t mean to stare. Gran says I’m h-hopeless,” he offers Harry a small, slightly pained smile as if to say _what can you do?_  and holds out hand. “I’m Neville Longbottom.”

Neville’s hand is trembling and slightly damp but Harry takes it without hesitation. “Pleased to meet you Neville.”

That, at least, gets a genuine smile out of the boy.

Well, at least until something dark leaps off his lap and disappears under one of the seats. “Trevor!” Neville cries and dives after him. “Come back!”

Harry has to bite his tongue to keep from laughing and, after a moment, gets down on his knees to help Neville search for his runaway toad. A few minutes and a silent _accio_ later Harry holds up his hands. “Got him!” he announces and Neville nearly melts onto the floor with relief.

“Oh, thank Merlin,” he mutters as he gathers the toad back into his hands. “Gran would kill me if I lost him.” He clutches the toad protectively to his chest and Harry’s lips twitch as he watches the other boy stroke his familiar with gentle hands. “I know t-toads aren’t terribly popular anymore,” he says as he settles back into the seat across from Harry, “b-but I like them. They like to burrow in the earth among lots of green things.” The most genuine smile that Harry has ever seen slips across Neville’s face.

“You like plants?”

Neville blushes and nods. “Y-yes. Gran says it’s not really appropriate b-but I like to follow the gardener around and h-help.”

“I like gardening too,” Harry puts in and it’s even mostly true. Pruning the rose bushes and weeding the flower beds had always been preferable to being stuck indoors with whatever torment his aunt, uncle, and cousin had seen fit to dish out. “But outside of yanking up weeds I’m complete pants at it.”

“O-oh… I’m s-sure you’re n-no…” Harry waves away Neville’s protest.

“Complete. Pants. At. It,” he repeats. “Honestly, I have a bad habit of getting lost in thought and then _poof_ , before I know it I’ve accidentally pulled up all my aunt’s dahlias. I imagine it will be only worse with plants that move or… whatever. But I bet you’re looking forward to Herbology.”

“I am,” Neville grins again, excitement bubbling over as he adds, “Hogwarts is supposed to have some of the most extensive greenhouses in Britain. They even have a mandrake bed!” And then, just for a moment Harry can see the man Neville becomes, passionate and thoughtful, with a sense of self and a steadiness that Harry had found himself envying more than once.  Harry gives his head a little shake, clearing away the ever encroaching fog of thoughts just as Neville asks, “W-what about y-you? Probably looking f-forward to Defense.”

Harry shrugs because, yeah, he kind of is looking forward to defense – though not at all for the reasons Neville is probably thinking. He’s not looking forward to it because he’s some prodigy at defense – he’s good, yeah, but he rather thinks that’s because in the past if he wasn’t good than there was an increasingly good chance that he’d end up dead in some Voldemort driven madness – though he does enjoy it when they have a good professor. Remus had been brilliant and Snape, much as sixteen year old him had despised the man, had been fascinating and insightful. Merlin, even Crouch-as-Moody had been amazing at the job. Bat shit crazy, of course, but amazing.

But no, Harry is not particularly looking forward to Defense this year because of the subject matter or because of Quirrell’s teaching style. No, he’s rather looking forward to the reassurance that what is left of Voldemort is living on the back of the stuttering professor’s head. As terrible and awful and… everything that the man was – had been, would be – Harry can’t help but remember the rush of relief he had felt at seeing the unfaded pink of his scar in the Dursley’s mirror, can’t help but remember the brief weight of an exhausted, abandoned infant in his arms.

But he really can’t tell Neville that, can he? There’s crazy risk taking and then there’s just asking to have Dumbledore try to murder him the moment he steps off the train.

Nor can he can the other boy that he has no idea what he’s looking forward to, in terms of content, because despite six years of magical education he has never actually had the bloody chance to really discover what subjects he actually _likes_. Each year had been filled with a mystery to solve – an evil or injustice he felt obligated to stop. School had been… secondary. In the end it had been nothing more than something that occasionally taught him how to stay alive while providing busywork to pass the moments between emergencies.

But it’s not like he can tell Neville that either.

So instead he shrugs. “I guess? Honestly, everything sounds really interesting. I still can’t believe magic is _real_.”

And that is not a lie. Not even a little bit.

Neville looks up from Trevor and blinks. “What d-do you…”

The sound of the compartment door sliding open interrupts and both boys look up as two girls peek into the compartment. There’s something vaguely familiar about both of them: one taller with strawberry blonde hair pulled back in a braid and cornflower blue eyes, the shorter with rounder features and a beaming smile half hidden behind a cascade of yellow curls.

“Oh, thank Merlin,” the taller one of them mutters. “Can we join you?” she asks, already halfway into the compartment, tugging her companion in after her. The train, nearly vacant when Harry had boarded a quarter of an hour ago, is crowded and busy with most of the students having to shout to be heard above everyone else.

“Of course,” Harry answers after a quick glance at Neville, who looks a bit like he’s gotten a good look at a basilisk in a mirror.

“Thanks! Everything is filling up so fast!” the shorter girl exclaims as she plops down on the bench near Neville. “I’m Hannah, Hannah Abbott.”

Huh. No wonder she looks familiar.

“Harry Potter.”

The sound of his name brings her head whipping up from where she’d been digging in the bag sitting on her lap so fast that Harry’s a bit surprised he doesn’t hear her neck crack. “Wow,” she breathes after a moment of stunned silence that makes Harry want to fidget awkwardly. “ _Wow_ ,” she repeats, a little breathless. “I mean, I knew you would be in our year but…” Her eyes, the same clear blue of a spring sky after rain, stare at him so hard that Harry completely expects to burst into flame. Or have his clothes spontaneously vanished. “ _… wow.”_

“ _Hannah_ ,” the other girl sighs in exasperation, sinking onto the same bench of Harry with a sort of properness that makes Harry blink. “I apologize for her,” the girl continues, turning to Harry. “She gets a little star struck and carried away. Susan Bones,” she adds, offering Harry her hand in a no-nonsense gesture that Harry takes before he’s even aware of it.

She’d been very competent and to the point in the DA too, now that Harry’s thinking about it.

Quieter, though.

Of course, that probably had something to do with the fact that her aunt had been – _is_ – the Head of the DMLE. Trying to fight evil and corruption from the heart of it, while playing by the rules…

Yeah. Harry would have been quiet too.

“…of the summer was pleasant?”

Harry blinks back to the present in time to see Neville turn an interesting shade of pink and nod his head. “Y-yes. It w-was.” For a second it looks like he’s going to say something else but then his nerve fails him and he goes back to staring at the toad in his lap.

“So, uh, Neville and I were just talking about what classes we’re looking forward to…”

Hannah’s face is brightened by a sunny grin. “Charms,” she announces without hesitation. “They just seem so useful!”

This time Susan _does_ roll her eyes. “Yes, because you’ll _never_ have to brew a potion in real life.”

“I won’t!” Hannah insists. “That’s what apothecaries are for! If I’m going to be stewing over a flame all day I’d much rather make something that tastes good. I make _the best_ lemon drizzle cake,” she boasts with a small smile. “Plus,” she adds with a poke of her finger at Susan, “cousin Elizabeth lent me some past copies of _Witch Weekly_ and mum won’t be around to say that I’m too young to look like a hussy if I want to charm on some lipstick.”

Susan looks torn between amused and intrigued by that statement and Harry finds himself hiding a smile. It’s ridiculous. This whole conversation is ridiculous but there is something… innocent about it. Something pure and hopeful and he soaks it up like a bloody sponge. Like quiet sunsets and the weight of Hedwig on his arm, it’s a salve on the weary, broken bits of him.

“Well, _I’m_ excited for potions, even if Professor Snape is supposed to be terrifying and strict,” Susan confesses. “And Aunt Susan has always been a dab hand at transfiguration. I think she’s hoping that I’ll follow in her footsteps there.” The slight brush of pink across the girl’s cheeks says that her aunt isn’t the _only_ one hoping that. “What about you two?”

“H-herbology,” Neville answers instantly and clutches at Trevor tightly enough that his little eyes sort of bug out.

“Everything,” Harry answers with a shrug as the girls eyes turn on him. “It’s just fascinating and… _amazing_ what magic can do.” Terrible too. Wonderful and terrible and utterly mad. “I’m sure I’ll have a favorite eventually but…” he shrugs again. “It’s all a bit brilliant, isn’t it?”

With the ice broken the four of them fall into a comfortable get-to-know-you sort of conversation. Well, the three of them, really, but Neville contributes more than Harry thought he would. Or remembers him ever doing during such conversations in the Gryffindor common room. Bloody hell, it’d been their fourth year before Harry had even noticed that Neville liked herbology and even then it only happened because a crazy Death Eater gave the other boy a book in the hopes that Harry would sit up and take a hint about how not to drown in the Black Lake. Which actually hadn’t worked. Because Harry is a dunderhead.

Just as the train begins to move they are joined by another first year, a girl who absentmindedly introduces herself as Mandy Brocklehurst as she shoves her dark hair up into a messy knot on top of her head. Harry can’t place her for the life of him, which is ridiculous because there’s all of thirty-odd students in their year. She definitely hadn’t been in Gryffindor or Slytherin _or_ the DA. Or played quidditch, which pretty much means that Harry has no bloody idea who she is. Six years attending school with her and he has no idea who this girl is. Knows nothing about her. It takes a great deal of effort not to laugh rather hysterically as the others introduce themselves because apparently if Voldemort had ever bothered to enlist a Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff student to do his dirty work Harry would have never made it to their confrontation in the Forbidden Forest. Hell, he would have never even seen the attack coming.

Merlin.

 Harry manages to exert some measure of control over his emotions just in time to introduce himself. Unlike the others Mandy doesn’t melt into a puddle of star struck goo – or exasperation, in the case of Susan – like the others had as he gives his name. Instead, she blinks rather rapidly at him and asks, “Are you really?” before turning to everyone else and asking if they mind if she lets her cat out of its carrier, which then leads to a mad scramble to find some sort of container to hold Trevor.

It’s delightfully refreshing.

“H-h-he’s got a cage, in m-my t-trunk,” Neville stutters out apologetically, “but h-his travel c-carrier was b-broken.”

“And you didn’t have time to buy a new one?” Susan asks, not unkindly as she digs through her own bag, scowling at the obvious lack of a container suitable for holding a toad.

Neville shrugs and huddles down into the slope of his shoulders. “It w-wasn’t b-broken when I g-g-got on the t-train.” The three girls promptly pause as they dig through their bags and turn to stare at him, eyes wide. “Some o-older y-years pushed past a-and…” he trails off and stares down at the amphibian clutched between his hands. “I d-didn’t w-want him t-to cut h-himself on the broken g-glass.”

“Well of course you didn’t,” Susan murmurs gently, while Mandy presses her lips into a flat frown and glares at the compartment door.

“That’s awful!” Hannah tells him and shoves her arm nearly up to her shoulder into the bag that clearly has some space expansion charms on it. “I don’t understand why some people are such _idiots_ … would this work?” The box clutched in her hands is one of Honeydukes’ boxed assortments. One of the larger sizes that advertises _Enough to satisfy an entire quidditch team!_ in flashing gold script at the corner of the box. “I mean, I’d have to take the chocolate out of it but we could punch some holes around the sides to let in air…”

“Thank you,” Neville whispers and Hannah beams at him. Five minutes later Trevor is settled securely in the chocolate box and sitting on the seat next to Neville and a sleek tortoiseshell colored cat named Thea is investigating the compartment, chirping as she hops up in laps and pokes her nose in bags and in the shadows underneath the benches.

“You should report them when we get to the school,” Susan tells the round-faced boy as they ease back into conversation. “The older years that broke the cage,” she adds, just in case Neville needs the clarification. The look of horror on Neville’s face is enough to make Harry’s heart twist.

“N-no… but t-then t-they’ll…” he tries to protest and Harry privately agrees with the other boy’s fears. He can’t picture any of the older students – Gryffindors or Slytherins – that would react well to being told on for something as small as shoving into a first year.

 “They could have hurt your familiar,” presses Susan, her face grim. “That’s a serious allegation and you know it.”

Harry blinks. “… what?” He gives his head a little shake. “I mean… it is?”

Susan gives him an odd look. “Of course it is. Even an improperly bonded familiar is an extension of your magic and the bond itself is sacred. One of the oldest bonds there is. To harm another wizard’s familiar is a rather hefty fine at the very least. If the older years had hurt…”

“…T-trevor.”

“…Trevor with their bullying they would have faced suspension. Death would have resulted in their expulsion from Hogwarts and, if they were of age, an Azkaban sentence would not have been out of the question.”

Harry stares, his heart pounding painfully in his chest as he remembers Umbridge’s blatant attack on Hedwig. How had he not known this? How had no one mentioned it? _Why_ had no one mentioned it? Why had no one _done something_?

“…Harry?”

“Yeah. Sorry. Still here,” he forces himself to give an awkward laugh. “I just… I didn’t know that.”

“Oh.”

Now Hannah and Mandy are giving him odd looks as well.

That… that’s just bloody great.

Harry sighs and plasters a smile that he’s not sure anyone believes onto his face. “So Mandy, what subject are you looking forward to the most?”

 

* * *

 

It takes Draco less than half an hour to find him.

Harry’s not sure why he’s surprised that the platinum haired boy locates him so quickly, but he is. He’s also impressed but he’ll be damned if he mentions _that_.

_Not the Draco you knew. Not the Draco you knew_ , he repeats mentally as he and the rest of the compartment spare a glance for the Malfoy heir standing in the doorway, the familiar forms of Crabbe and Goyle filling the area behind him.

“Can we help you?” Susan finally asks, polite, but there’s an unmistakable wariness to her tone.

“They’re saying that Harry Potter is on the train,” Draco’s eyes move over the compartment until they come to rest on Harry’s face. His entire face. That surprises Harry. Or maybe Malfoy’s just received some super posh lessons on how to stare at something without looking like he’s staring at something. It wouldn’t surprise him. “I was just curious if what they were saying was true.”

“It is,” Harry’s heart his hammering away inside his chest and his palms are embarrassingly sweaty but outwardly he’s calm. Or, at least, he thinks he is. He’s not going off like a tea kettle, hissing and spitting and whistling at everything which is, frankly, an improvement over most of his past interactions with Malfoy. _Not the Draco you knew. Not the Draco you knew_. He’s not the Draco that tormented Neville or called Hermione a mudblood or mocked him endlessly through most of their school years. Not the Draco that let Death Eaters into Hogwarts or tried to murder Dumbledore. Not the Draco that won the allegiance of the Elder Wand and in turn lost it to Harry.  He’s not that Draco. Not quite. Not yet. Hopefully, not ever.

Harry forces himself to breathe and hold out his hand. “Harry Potter,” he offers and can’t help the way his mouth turns up at the reversal of original events.

The other boy hesitates for just a second, the silvery gray of his eyes assessing Harry for a moment before he seems to nod to himself and step into the compartment, clasping Harry’s hand with his own. “Draco Malfoy. These are Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle,” he motions with his chin to the other boys. “Mind if I join you?”

“But there’s only one seat!” Hannah points out in a bit of a breathless rush. “Sorry. I’m just saying…”

“I know,” Malfoy drawls with a quirk of his eyebrow. He gives the boys behind him another elegant jerk of his head. “Go back to Pansy. She will keep an eye on you until we get to Hogwarts.”

“Is that how you treat your friends?” Harry asks before he can stop himself, the disdain heavy on his lips but the look Malfoy gives him is more quizzical than anything else.

“Friends? They’re not my friends,” Malfoy dismisses with a callousness that Harry can’t – even after _everything_ – believe. How dare he? How _dare_ he? Of all the arrogant, insufferable…! Crabbe _died_ because of him. Them. All of them. Died because he followed a friend into… Harry clenches his fingers in his lap and tries to calm himself, tries to ignore the way the windows are rattling harder in the walls of the train.

Neville notices first, though Harry’s not sure if that’s because he’s sitting the closest to the windows or because he’s just that much more observant than everyone else in the compartment.

Everyone else is just looking at him oddly. Even Mandy, who is absentmindedly batting Thea’s paws away from the wisps of her hair that have escaped the knot on top of her head.

“T-they’re v-v-vassals. H-have been f-for centuries.”

_Vassals?_ The word is vaguely familiar, rattling around in Harry’s brain as he tries to push past the blinding frustration that Malfoy has always managed to raise in him and the echo of Ron’s voice muttering about _slimy gits_ and _Slytherins_ and _honestly, what did you expect from the ferret?_ He’s read about that recently. Probably in the enormous book on the Wizengamot and pureblood alliances that is so bloody dry that it makes Binns’ class look as exciting as trying to ride a dragon in comparison. Which would be why it’s all swimming together in incomprehensible mush that does nothing but leave vague impressions on Harry’s mind.

Impressions that aren’t very favorable.

“… slaves?” Harry snorts. “Is that supposed to make it _better_?”

Malfoy recoils like he’s been struck. “What in Merlin’s name are you on about, Potter?” And his tone is so familiar, so like every miserable interaction Harry had ever had with the blonde prat that Harry can feel himself puffing up like a pissed off cat.

_Not the Draco you knew_. _Not yet,_ the reasonable part of his mind tries to repeat but the rest of him is brimful of indignation, like a volatile cauldron one stir away from exploding all over the damn place and earning him a month of detentions. 

It’s a bloody miracle that he doesn’t roll his eyes. “You _just_ said…” he begins hotly but Neville interrupts him, his voice quiet and shaking but with a hint of steel.

“Vassals a-aren’t s-s-slaves.”

Harry jerks in his seat and turns to Neville, blinking. Because he’s pretty bloody certain that’s… the book… it said… “…what?”

“Vassals are Houses that have surrendered their political autonomy to another House,” Mandy butts in, sounding entirely too much like Hermione as she recites the information.

Harry blinks. “…what?”

“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Malfoy takes another step into the compartment and lets the door click shut behind him. “What she means, Potter, is that my family is responsible for their families much like a parent is responsible for their child. Did your tutors not teach you anything?”

“Didn’t have tutors,” Harry mutters and just like that he feels like a puppet whose strings have been cut and he collapses against the well-worn bench seat, sighing. Clearly, the month spent reading has not made up the difference between what he should know and what little is actually rattling around in his brain. “My apologies,” he offers and Draco gives him a short, sharp nod after a moment, confusion still flickering at the corner of his steel gray eyes. The Black eyes, Harry realizes with a start. _Sirius’ eyes_. He forgets – _of course_ , he forgets – that Draco is related to Sirius as well as Bellatrix. He forgets that he’s the only person in this carriage who has lived through a war. Who has been tortured. Hunted. Controlled. He wants to shed the past, to let his former life slip off of him like water off a duck’s back, or a snake shedding its skin when it outgrows it. He wants it, but he doesn’t need Snape’s voice calling him a narrow minded imbecile in the back of his head to realize that such a thing is not going to happen. He forgets, though. Harry gives his head a little shake. “Of course you can join us.”

Draco eyes him warily but then he takes the seat between Harry and Susan, pale fingers absentmindedly rubbing at Thea’s ears when she hops up into his lap. The silence is awkward, the six of them sitting there on the edges of their seats and trying not to look at each other too much. Harry bites back a sigh. _Of course_ he managed to bollocks everything up.

“So, what subject are you looking forward to?” Hannah asks just as Harry is contemplating throwing himself from the moving train and being done with it all. Draco looks a little taken back at the bubbly cheerfulness in the girl’s voice and looks around like he can’t quite believe that she’s talking to him. “We’ve all answered. I’m excited for Charms and Susan for Potions and Transfiguration. Neville likes Herbology and Mandy’s rather keen on History. Harry here thinks everything is brilliant,” and Harry can’t stop the blush that burns at his cheeks when she rolls her eyes and winks at him. “So what about you?”

After a moment of hesitation Draco confesses, “I like to fly, but going through the intro classes will be a bore. I… potions, I suppose. My godfather is a Potions Master and is the professor at Hogwarts and he’s been teaching me the basics. I enjoy it.”

“Professor Snape is your godfather?” Susan asks, eyes round as bludgers, and Harry blesses her for her question because it means that he doesn’t have to ask it and inevitably have it come out insulting. Or something.

Frankly, he’s just grateful that his mouth isn’t hanging open like a bloody fly trap.

Instead, he fights the urge to laugh rather hysterically because that makes so much sense. A horrible, twisted sort of sense.

And yet, at the same time, it doesn’t. It doesn’t at all. Snape’s a half-blood, brilliant, but from a poor background. And he’d have been young, not much more than twenty, when Draco was born. A Death Eater, sure, but only for a couple of years at most, for all that he’d likely been friends with many of them in the years proceeding. So what had made Lucius bloody Malfoy, one of the most arrogant, influential blood supremists that Harry had known name a poor half-blood with limited connections as his heir’s godfather?

_There is more to life than good and Death Eaters._

At this rate, he should get it tattooed across his bloody forehead so that he stops being surprised every time the world illustrates it to him.

“…he as strict as everyone says?” Susan continues as he stares at Draco. _Fascinated by Malfoy_ , he thinks rather hysterically, _and Snape. Apparently true in both lives._

A fond sort of smirk breaks across Draco’s narrow features. “Merlin, probably worse,” he admits with a shrug. “He takes potions _very_ seriously. Bit of advice? Memorize his syllabus and don’t ever show up to class unprepared. He has no tolerance for stupidity or lack of effort.”

It is, all things considered, probably the best advice Harry has ever heard.

Merlin help him, he should probably listen to it.

 

* * *

 

Despite the rough start and the initial wariness the others in the compartment clearly felt at Draco’s presence the rest of the train ride is smooth and… pleasant. Surprisingly so. His first train ride had been filled with excitement and apprehension and the hot flash flare of indignation mixed with the absolute glee bubbling in his veins. And that’s all still there, but in different quantities: the same ingredients blended together to make a cake where once he had made biscuits. It is unsettling. It is exhilarating. It is…

Harry doesn’t know what it is but he thinks he might like it. Maybe. Probably.

Regardless of how he feels about it though he suspects that the rest of his life is going to feel this way. Or at least the next six or seven years – all the same ingredients mixed up and formed into something completely different and new.

Hopefully something better.

Letting a small smile pull at the corner of his mouth, Harry follows the rest of their little group from their compartment and off the train into the chilly night air.

“Firs’ years! Firs’ years, over here!” Hagrid’s booming voice is enough to make him shiver. “C’mon now, follow me! Firs’ years, this way! You’ll get yer first glimpse o’ Hogwarts in a moment. Just come…”

Like a herd of nervous unicorns, all gangly and innocent, the eleven-year-olds cautiously peel away from the chaos of the older students swarming across the platform and follow the half giant’s instructions and waving hand, letting their feet carry them down a well-worn path and around a curve to the Black Lake. Harry follows along behind them with Neville at his side and the rest just in front of them, a mixture of apprehension and longing beating away at the inside of his chest. Even the others are quiet, eyes wide as they peer through the darkness to catch their first glimpse of the castle.

There.

Proud. Whole. Weathered stone walls and sweeping turrets and hundreds of windows glowing gold against the great expanse of the starry sky.

Hogwarts.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like so much of this chapter can be summed up with, "Harry, bless his heart, he tries."  
>  Next chapter will be the Sorting Ceremony :)


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